TEEHEHEHE aww! This avatar fits perfectly with your post! BTW... I think you are using the old file I gave you. Lines are not as sharp ;) Thanks for the shout out Jon Snow! If you used the "Winter is coming..." it would have been a forshadow to your solution. hahah

Before delving into solving your problems... OMG I can't believe your GF dies!!! WTF!?! I'm so sad... I wanted Jon Snow to be with her! ahhh ahhh... no one is safe in GoT! WHY!?!!??!?!

So back to it, problems of a lord.... You came up with so many options. I didn't even know that there were so many options. I think you like to curate, so auto-voting would eliminate part of the fun.... although when you do go radio silent you could put it on auto vote until you return. You could always do a hybrid of it if you wanted to alleviate​ duties but still have the ability to manually curate.

Deligating power seems like an interesting​ idea, although I think you do love to curate​ and you are so active, so you don't need to give it to anyone else. But if you are trying to make people your knights.. I get it... LOL build your army!

I think as a lord of Steemit, you have a great duty to curate good content, so I say upvote whoever you like, you seem to have great taste, but don't encourage the spamming, unless the spammers have great content! :) I guess one way to think about it is... if you encourage spammers by upvoting them, then long term it could bring down the value of Steemit, because you would be pardoning spammer and letting them think that this is the right way use Steemit. Instead, you want to encourage people to make real connections and write quality stuff. So I would say its your duty to maintain Quality control!

Anyways watcha think?

ALSO! Do you play Settlers? (saw that was in your gif) I LOVE that game... and I'm pretty good (I usually win :P)