If you voted for this post hoping to get curation rewards, you wasted your vote.

Would it not be useful to have two upvoting options? One for rewards and one for "likes"?

There are different desires when I vote on something.

1. I am willing to use my voting power to reward it.
2. I like it and want the poster and everyone else to know.
3. I want to reward and I like it.

If other users understood better about how they are going to get paid for upvoting they would not pile on and inflate a post that doesn't warrant it. And if they had an option of showing their appreciation at least with a "thumbs up", they could feel like they are showing appreciation. Instead, some users are voting for things they like, but don't necessarily want to reward due to having no other fast option of showing their approval for a post.

If people could thumbs up any post they wanted to, the poster and others could at least have some indication that the post in question had some value and maybe is going in the right direction. Currently when a new user makes a post, I think most other users feel that since it will more likely be a wasted vote because it won't be voted on by a whale, they are reluctant to vote. They may like it, but they won't waste their vote on it.

Anyway, there may be good reasons why separate thumbs up and thumbs down button would be counter-productive or take something away from how the system currently rewards, but I can't think of it.

Any thoughts?

And I liked your comment as well. It was informative and ultimately should help users make better choices.