End the Early Voting Penalty on Low Earning Posts

Early Voting Penalty

If you vote early on a post your curation reward will be cut, from 100% at 0 minutes to 0% at 30 minutes.

The Problem

There is something that has been bothering me about this though, and that is that while this works fine for high earning posts, it does not work for low earning posts.

If you are voting on a low earning post, a post of an author who is not popular for example, then the optimal strategy is to vote after 30 minutes. There is no benefit in voting early, i.e. before others, because there are unlikely to be many others. Voting early just makes you lose part of your curation reward.

I've caught myself waiting to vote on some posts for this reason, and sometimes unfortunately forgetting to come back to vote. I am probably not the only one whom this has happened to. People waiting with voting also reduces a post's velocity, i.e. it acquires votes more slowly, making it look less successful than it is.

Suggestion

My suggestion is to make the early voting reward penalty dependent on the rewards a post has collected at 30 minutes. As follows for example:

• All posts with $10 or less reward at 30 min will result in no reward penalty at all for early voters.
• All posts with $50 or more reward at 30 min will result in the current reward penalty (i.e. the way it is now).
• All posts with between $10 and $50 in rewards will result in a percentage of the current reward penalty. With that percentage going linearly from 0% at $10 to 100% at $50.

Of course the limits of $10 and $50 could also be $5 and $25 or $10 and $100 for instance.

---

Like this idea? Upvote and follow me!