I appreciate the questions. Have you already read the Complete Overview and the post explaining the tracking sheet? They break down a lot of the mechanics, even going into specific formulas for some components.
We do not currently have any posts/comments that enable upvoting the accounts for the other pools. As we move more into automation, we plan to publish regular records of what posts have been upvoted by each account, and each account will publish its own updates. That will make it so that people can upvote the account they receive their votes from in addition to (or instead of) the main account, and receive reward back for doing so.
At that point we will also announce a new system for how supporting upvotes are rewarded that will better incentive supportive upvotes from larger accounts. Better incentives for people with more steem power to upvote our updates is good for everyone in the program. At present upvotes from larger accounts are under-rewarded (as you correctly realized), and we see the effects of that when we look at the distribution of upvotes received.
We will be calculating the value of all upvotes received from our members when we move to the new system, and any members that would have received more reward for their upvotes under the new rules will be 'caught up' to the level of reward they would get under the new system.
That means that if you want to start upvoting to boost your votes received now, you can. If the reward you get back falls below our benchmark, you will get a nice surge of larger upvotes when we move into the new system before settling into your new equilibrium. (I will post an update that breaks down the details more fully when we get closer to the change. If you'd prefer to wait until that point before supporting us with larger upvotes, we totally understand!)
I did read everything, but feel my questions fell a little bit outside what was covered. Or maybe it was covered, but because I was trying to take everything in I missed parts or didn't fully grasp it as I was reading.
Anyways like the planned updates. Will be running a contest or two to give away some memberships to my followers. Going to get another member who already has a membership to help me run the contests and be a judge. Think that it's something that I'll kick off now and if I see good results with interest for the contest I'll continue it maybe once per month.
Thanks for your very detailed response. Love that you clearly have a passion for what you are doing and willing to deal with the extra questions. Appreciate you the time you have taken.
You're welcome. Thank you for the support. I love it when members take the ball and run with it, hosting contests to giveaway shares, etc. Let us know when your contest post is up and we will review it for resteeming.
I agree that your questions were outside what was explicitly covered. I try to keep my audience in mind and have enough detail for the people that care, but not so complicated that it loses everybody else. I think the result is a failure in both. Most people still get lost, and there isn't enough detail for the people that care.
I'm working on an FAQ that covers the important bits at a very basic level, and that will free me to write a high complexity version when I announce the program changes. (The basics will be unchanged, but the mechanics and math behind the scenes will be more precise than is supported by our current partially automated processes.)
Audience is key. Most people don't care about the little details, but I've always believed that the money is in the details. Little things add up over the long haul.
You seem to have a good path for where you are going with everything. Wondering if you ever ran the math to see what it would look like if you kept part of the 1 Steem fee for SP vs leasing with it all up front. Short term the rewards would be lower, but leasing isn't profitable right now so long term I would think the entire pool would come out ahead. Sure you have run the numbers, just tossing it out there in case.
As for the contest I figure next week it will start up. Looking for 2 different contests, 2 weeks in a row. First one will be for plankton and thinking 3 sponsorship prizes, but might do 2 so I can do another sooner. Will tag you in the post and you can review what we are doing at that point.
You're absolutely right that the money is in the details. I have seen a lot of programs fail on Steem, and often it's because the details weren't right and it made it easier for bad actors to wipe out the program's resources.
At the rates we pay, we usually have a little STEEM left over after our leased delegations. We did start out putting everything into the leases, but we have since toned it down. Now we have target multiples (e.g. for every 1 share in a pool, we target 2-3 SP) and if we have STEEM left over after every pool meets its target, the rest is powered up. The targets are a little higher for the top pools to encourage people to increase their shares and move up into the higher pools.
It's good you are able to start putting a little towards long term voting power vs all leased. Really like that you have put so much thought into all of this...so many miss that the details are key!
BTW, just posted a contest that will reward at least one sponsorship. It's actually a contest designed to give me direction on future contests where I hope to give away 2 sponsorships per week. Let me know your thoughts if you get a minute. If you are busy I totally get it, but if you have a chance your time and thoughts will be appreciated.
I resteemed your contest post. I love the idea of splitting into separate contest tiers for plankton and minnows, although it might be a challenge to get a good contestant pool in both tiers.
I don't usually enter contests because I'm way too busy, but I think they're a great part of the ecosystem. That's one reason that I like to resteem contests that support our program, along with providing a regular list in one of my updates. Since I don't really enter contests, I don't have the best insight into what contests will motivate quality content.
Have you reviewed the contests that are out there? You could try to find an unfilled niche for your contest to support. Or you could identify what the most popular contests are and do something similar. It just depends on what direction you want to go and whether you prefer to build a close community around your contests or to grow quickly and have lots of entrants every week.
The either or that you proposed, copy vs fill a niche, is why I decided to offer a contest to see what my followers what to see out of a contest. We will see what everyone comes up with.
Thank you for the resteem. Hopefully that will give me a few extra entries to choose from.
If only 1 plankton submits an entry they will win, if that happens for 3 weeks in a row that same person will just get 3 sponsored spots. It's not what I'd like to happen, but as this is new to me I know it may not succeed. We will see.