Thanks for the clarifications Mike, I should probably edit my post with these.
One thing which I do understand why It's in place, but I think does reduce the amount of content worthy of some sort of vote is:
For those of us curating by the above listed guidelines, we do not nominate posts outside of the 27-52 range. It's too risky, as our weekly Curation Score depends on us getting posts approved more often than rejected.
And on speaking to bitrocker this morning, he told me that the weekly total was around 200 authors. Honestly, I think it should be 5x that many. And comments of improvement issued post vote.
I sound like a slave driver :)
Thanks again!