What issues did you have? As far as I can tell, most of the top curators are still here. In fact, I'm the one who went away between 2018-19. I vaguely recall some communities Curie was supporting were doing poor curation, but they were removed after an audit. Anyway, let me know, I'll do whatever I can to make sure there's never any issues and Curie remains committed to quality curation and community building.
Also, are you sure they were "top curators"? I recall back in 2016/17 we had some people claiming to be Curie hotshots when they were just one of a hundred other curators. Also, there's no one "in charge", as its a community project, so I'm guessing there's some misunderstanding, or someone was lying to you. I suppose that's the downside of a community project.
That was a long time ago. I cant really remember the names nor would i want to share them after so much time...
Just an example.
I remember there was something where you had to prove yourself that you were a good curator before you became a curie curator. You had to send posts to your mentor that was a top curator there. There was one top curator that after learning who your mentor was would tell you to send him/her the posts instead and that they would put a "good word" in for you. lol
I think this was after you stepped back a bit. Its all a bit fuzzy if im honest but i remember there was favoritism from those making calls on what will be curated based on which curator proposed it.
This was all when steem price was fairly high compared to today so you could make a decent paycheck from curation.
These are all internal things, insignificant in the grand scheme of things which turned me off from Curie but on the outside and with the work Curie was doing, curie was overwhelmingly positive in every way.
Not sure how you do it now but before a curator would send in his post recomendation and there was 2-5 (cant remember exactly) people and only one needed that would approve the post for a curie vote and give the expected reward to the curator.
Those that approve posts for curation could be seen as "being in charge". I always saw that as the main point of weakness in the otherwise well calibrated system.
Ah, alright. Yeah, that's a long time ago, I'm sure there won't be any such issues now. Curie was actually an open curation platform, where anyone could submit a post. Sometime in mid-2017 there was a massive rush of curators (literally like hundred curators a day) which we couldn't handle, so a system was put into place where curators would find their own ways to mentor curators and recommend them. In hindsight, I suppose some curators did a bad job of it, but I don't think it's fair to reflect that on Curie. Anyway, no harm done. There's still a mentorship program, but now it's restricted to the best curators only, so I don't think there'll be a repeat of this.
Even when you have pure intentions you can never account for every bad apple. Majority of current and ex curie curators i hold in high regard, its just that every system has a flaw that can most times, fortunately, be fixed.
With low prices these issues dont really show much. As i said, not sure how you do it now but i hope you dealt with all these things already.