I like manual curations too. I did not avoid auto upvoting though, but I do more of manual curations when I am in the platform because I like finding new stuffs and there are lots of interesting writers in SteemIt. The only problem is that I run out of VP very quickly and I might not be able to give a decent upvote on the good article that I find at the latter time of day. Ah, curator’s dilemma!