What you need to know about curation

Is it does not work.
Rarely it does, and even then, using your own vote to give yourself author rewards works at least 3 times better than when it works.

My guidelines to curation for those whom insist:
Do not upvote a post once:

1. it got 2 votes or more.
2. it has over 0.02$ in rewards worth
3. the author upvoted himself directly, through proxy, circle-jerk, abuse team or by buying a vote

When I find a good author whose post does not meet my guidelines but I want to reward, I seek a comment by him which is not voted, and vote or buy a vote on it.
I also follow him and in rare cases I also resteem his post.
If you still insist on voting good content directly, do it once you have some voting quota left before you go to sleep, unless you are smart or lucky enough to have your voting automated, and then you never have spare voting quota left.

If people adopted my advises here, self upvotes will become more common and upvotes they were meant to be according to the developers will become more rare.
And this seems the only way to get them correct it.