It's a very interesting experiment and I applaud you for putting the effort in to do this. I think it is something a lot of the people in the community have been looking for.
I noticed you because "linkback-bot" told me you had mentioned my post, and I was curious to see what it was about :)
One suggestion that you might want to consider is to try and account for actual users vs. bots. Unfortunately for me, this would probably reduce my rating by quite a bit (because I am blessed to have made my way onto a few bot lists), but I actually think that filtering out posts like mine might get you closer to what you are going for. There is no 'perfect' way to do this, but the best thing I can think of would be to add a small exclusion based on reputation.
Regardless of whether you keep it the same or tweak it though, I think this is a really cool idea and I'm following to see what it does.
A very interesting insight, Tim.
I'm pretty sure I'm on a few bots' radar, which might account for why my posts will skyrocket to >100 votes in quick fashion - but still with low earnings. It would be interesting to see how the chart would change by excluding heavily bot voted posts.
I appreciate the encouragement and feedback. I do wonder whether you are being overly modest since, notwithstanding a few bot fans of yours, you seem to have some great posts and I'm pleased to see them at the top.
However, I also take the concerns about bots seriously. It may have been easy to miss and slightly contrary to the opening statement, but we do currently count votes only from those with a reputation greater than 25. The exact level may be subject to change and if necessary (or interesting enough), I'm also open to taking on the technical challenge of developing more sophisticated measures for disregarding suspected bots while remaining true to our egalitarian spirit.
Thank you :)
A simple change of 30 instead of 25 might make a big difference. The only negative part I can think of is "lurkers" - people who only view and upvote, but never comment/post.
Cool, I like that suggestion. Looking at some stats on reputation distribution, it looks like that could make a meaningful difference without being too exclusionary. I've gone ahead and made 30 the minimum reputation score required.