This post is a question I am presenting, and I am looking for helpful answers and comments.

The Question Is...

Why do my posts "disappear" from the feeds?

I do a lot of manual curation every day. I don't use autovotes, bidbots, or even self-votes anymore. I'm just trying to find the best content I enjoy rewarding each day, and it's getting harder and harder to do because, I think they are being purged from the lists.

They're gone!

The latest confusion swirling my mind is why certain posts are not appearing in the feeds anymore. It's like they've been removed entirely. Currently I don't know if there is an easy way to locate older posts (days, not even weeks old) if I don't know if it exists from an author I don't yet know about.

If I'm lucky, I might remember to peruse my favorite author's blog feed for recent posts. That's the best I can hope for. Why aren't their posts appearing in my feed? My feed is exactly where I want to see them. What is the point of following authors if I don't get to read their posts?

What's missing?

Since I specialize in curating bonsai posts, I'm going to use this keyword as an example.

First let's look at the tag search.

tag search: #bonsai

https://steemit.com/created/bonsai

It says the last post was 7 days ago. The last post before that was 3 months ago.

Not true...

Remember, this is my specialty category of observation. It's muh baby.

Why don't any of THESE show up in search?

But these ones do show up?

But wait, there's more...

Much, much, more!

What ELSE is missing?

search keyword: bonsai
https://steemit.com/static/search.html?q=bonsai (sort by: Date)

Once again, so many missing posts as I mentioned above. They never appear.

Instead we find these...

Four Google Ads that take you off the site: Ad1. Ad2, Ad3, A4.
8 days old, $20.27, 317 votes, Keyword in comments about my activity
11 days old, $4.46, 96 votes, definitely deserving to appear in result searches
14 days old, $0, 2 votes, curation post linking to my more valuable missing post
2 months old, $0.03, 7 votes, spam/plagiarism

Conclusion

So far I have tested:

steemit
busy
steempeak
steeve (sorry I couldn't even get this to work, it requires a login)

There is a dependency in what users deem valuable, and what the blockchain deems valuable. Regardless of the number of votes and value a post receives it might not get saved on the search feeds by the blockchain. Instead, often posts of lesser value, importance, or validity are preserved, and I find this behavior befuddling to me.

Is this a blockchain hiccup? A cruel joke that some developer might tell me will go away if I stop paying attention to it? I doubt it.

If it isn't the curators who determines what gets saved and what gets lost, then who is making these important decisions? Why would I prefer someone to make decisions for the whole? Doesn't that defeat the point of decentralization on a digital world-wide scale?

I'm speaking as someone who cares about the historical chronicles of the valuable information by thousands of talented writers being produced every day that is being lost to the wind. Where does it go? Why does it go? Will it ever be found by those who are looking for it? Can/will this erosion of data be better cataloged than the default behavior performed by the blockchain?

Comments Welcome

Feedback from others who may be also frustrated are also welcome to share in the comments below. Perhaps some experts out there can help shed some light on this situation for us.

For sarcasm and troll comments, it's a free country if you want to add your two cents. I won't penalize you, but I won't entertain you either. I'm looking for answers, not drama.

Question: Why do my posts "disappear" from the feeds? [Steemit]