Many (the majority of) my curated pieces did not do much if any better than others to be honest. Curation was supposedly "broken" for the past year and a bit, but reputedly used to make a huge difference in reads (this was before my time, I joined in July 2021). They have been very fuzzy about what they have done to fix or change curation, while removing the notification at the same time, I found this all really confusing. I do think removing the notification was a mistake, and I asked Tony S. when he replied to a comment of mine if we would still get emails if we were chosen fo wider distribution/the Digest, and he didn't respond. I feel this has all been pretty alienating and de-motivating personally. Even if it didn't make a huge difference, having a metric to feel like we were doing something right does motivate many writers to keep at it, I really don't know why they don't grasp that things like rewarding writers for a job well done OR keeping our established communities better connected witht the author heads were a big motivating factor for many of us to spend time here.