Hi. I was a nominator for three months. Due to concerns/frustrations, I resigned.

Some observations. My perspective entirely. I don't claim to be "right." Your mileage may vary.

1. The nominators with whom I have interacted have integrity. They're not clubby and I don't think they favor one another. They put in a lot of work, and most of them don't make a lot of money as a result. If anyone thinks it's a way to make a fast buck, think again.

2. I think it is appropriate for nominators to self-nominate, so long as it is capped, which it is at two per month. Editors put in an enormous amount of free work for writers and for Medium. To me, it is fair for them to have an opportunity to be boosted in their own pubs, which they typically write for most often. I edit for MuddyUm and own Brain Labs, and it's a substantial amount of unpaid work.

3. I have not observed nominators favoring their own work for boosts. To the contrary, I have seen them spend a lot of time going to bat for their writers. The nominators I know are motivated largely by service. I am sure there are exceptions. There always are.

4. Like you, I have written a slew of articles that I am certain were boost-worthy but were declined. Most of the pieces I publish in Brain Labs require significant research. People tell me in the comments how clearly I explain complex concepts. Like you, I am shocked that some of my best work was rejected (I know it was nominated, and I was not the nominator). And I get a lot of feedback that the stuff I write for MuddyUm is really good. Up until several months ago, my humor was boosted regularly. Then someone turned off the faucet. I have no idea why, as the more I write, the better my humor gets. Of course, that is much the same for other writers in other genres.

5. I feel very very strongly that feedback from curator->nominator and nominator->writer would help enormously. But that second link depends on the first one. There was a one-month experiment on limited feedback from curator->nominator. Perceptions differ on the success of it. I can only speak from my experience. It absolutely 100% could be made to work without requiring much time or attention from curators AND it would end up saving far more time for curators AND nominators AND writers if that feedback mechanism was built into the process. Every second spent on a rejected article is wasted time. No value results. Feedback would mitigate that. *** Feedback does not need to devolve into arguments if thoughtfully built into the process.*** Creatives cannot thrive without feedback. And as Daniel Pink writes, autonomy, mastery, and purpose are like food and water to creatives. Without regular feedback, that is very very hard to provide.

6. I think curators should be slotted to specific genres and should be subject matter experts (SMEs) in their respective genres. So, I think I pretty much agree with you, though personally, I don't care at all about credentials. I value domain-specific expertise. Perhaps the curators are SMEs in specific genres. There is insufficient transparency for anyone to know. Why is that? I don't know. But I will say, based on some of the decisions I see made in the few genres where I am an SME, the curators don't seem to be SMEs. Would be happy to be proven wrong.