It is hard to tell what others do and most people do not search enough or even have any idea that witnesses exist. We know it is gonna be very hard for a project like Qurator to get noticed by the players.
Hmmm... What do we do? What we do is good!
Well, we are a small team and trying to make a change is not always easy. We do TRY though. Manually reviewing one member at a time to join our project. If they post crap, they never qualify. If they post original content with the correct images sourcing, then and only then do they join the Qurator project. We do try to monitor people after they have joined, we know they get lazy and start posting low quality content just to get their daily upvote. We warn and we kick. Quality/originality all the way or GTFO.
The Qurator project has been around for exactly 200 days now (our 200th edition will be posted today) where we steem day in and day out showcasing original content. Hosting weekly and bi-weekly competitions to help promote and motivate members to keep posting good content.
New to the witness scene we know we are not perfect and we do not make THOUSANDS. With the recent price of steem we barely break even. We are not going to spam with comments/wallet messages to get a witness vote. We will get them naturally from our members and real supporters. This might take forever but we will rather do it the right way.
We have been steeming daily, not just here but on Discord as well, actively chatting and helping members be just a little better with each post.
All our profits goes towards our members. WHY? Because as flawed and circle-jerky as Steemit might be, we feel there are some quality and integrity left. Even if we sometimes have to hang around in our little Qurator bubble where the drama is minimal and the upvotes are shared with love instead of hate.
So yes, we might not code. We might not fight spam as hard as others do. We promote and motivate those who know they post original content, and want just a little more recognition for their hard work.
So yes... That is what we do, that is how we try to make Steemit just a little bit better.