Okay there is something that bothers me: After reading about that dust payout threshold, it's totally worthless for steembasicincome to get upvotes from me (14 SP at 100%) on the comment without any other upvote. The autoupvotes on the posts should be fine though.
So right now the system encourages me and others to upvote comments with 100% but still with "dust" to get bonus shares.
I have no idea how many upvotes steembasicincome receives on the comments but I'm pretty sure most of the payout is declined and is way less than those bonus shares.
Also I understand, there is practically no way to be able to tell, if the upvotes pays out or not, without the right amount of automation. I think there is an update planned to be distribute the bonus shares on upvote value instead of amount of votes, but now it's quite a moral hazard.
I would suggest to distribute the bonus shares only for upvotes on posts of steembasicincome, not anymore for upvoting on comments, until an automated system is in place.
That's a good point. I've been making a big push this month to get updates out every day, and I'm working on some initiatives that will make that even easier. Once we are consistently posting every day, it would be fair to stop counting upvotes on comments. The primary reason we have been counting comments was that we weren't publishing updates consistently enough for members to hit their 28 upvote goal just from the updates.
I have started using some of the pool accounts for comments (instead of the main account), and upvotes on the pool accounts are not currently counted. (We give a small upvote on each meaningful comment when we respond, and using whichever pool account is closest to 100% makes it easier to manage the voting power across accounts).
It's very obliging from the program to allow those upvotes on comments for bonus shares. I get that. It's great and I really like it, because I get the full amount of bonus shares. But still, it is partly only a token gesture from the user to steembasicincome, burning VP from the user without a gain for the program (unless the user has enough SP, which I don't have).
Also: I don't know how things are going and how much work every update post makes. But for daily posts, so steembasicincome can get a basic income from the user base, a fully automated posting system would be preferrable. I would try to post daily automatically statistics generated from steembasicincome. # of Members, shares, pools, SP, votes incoming and outgoing, blacklists etc. Kinda like @followforupvotes does.
This relieves the pressure of trying to get an update post out daily with different content and it's still useful to have. On top steembasicincome can still push out different update posts, like interesting contests or changes on the system etc. Stuff were an automation would be more work.
But until the automation is full in place, rewarding a gesture should be stopped.
One thing that comes in my mind: Reducing the amount of # of upvotes needed for 100% bonus shares.
With some time and math it would be possible to go the following way:
Counting all the votes only on the normal posts not on comments, then calculating the new amount of bonus shares based on the old system (28 upvotes).
After that the amount of bonus shares should be smaller than the amount of bonus shares beforehand, because those votes on the comments are missing.
Reducing the minimum amount of upvotes to get the 100% bonus is going to increase the amount of bonus shares. So the minimum needed amount of upvotes should be reduced until, the amount of bonus shares will be same (or a little bit less) prior to this change.
After reducing the minimum amount of upvotes it should hand out nearly the same amount of bonus shares for the user.
There would be no loss for the user and no extra gain for steembasicincome. Zero sum game.
But it will discourage upvoting comments with dust and encourages setting up steembasicincome in an autoupvote system.
With a started automation and daily posts, the minimum needed amount can be increased again.
Just to put an emphasis on it: I really like this programm and this investment opportunity. 👍
But that's the main reason I want to see that steembasicincome is being rewarded for bonus shares. So it can grow even faster! 😁
The 28 upvote target is based on regular upvotes on daily updates. I looked into relative targets (based on % of actual updates upvoted) instead of absolute targets. The factor that you're not considering is the maintenance load. For the same effort required to continuously adjust relative targets instead of absolute targets, I can publish the daily updates and it becomes a moot point- since upvoting only the daily updates is sufficient if we are actually publishing them every day.
The target is 28 full upvotes, and there is currently no benefit to upvoting in excess of that. While your concerns arise from the number of upvotes you have given on comments which did not actually pay out, you were not actually rewarded for most of those upvotes under the current system. You have 99 full upvotes in the last month, and only 28 of those contributed to your bonus.
The whole reward system for upvotes will be revamped when we finish our fully automated system. At that point, we will be looking at % of rshares actually paid out, so any dusted upvotes will not be captured.
I'm not actually suggesting relative targets, maintaining that would just be annoying.
I have to admit, I never checked the amount of upvotes I have given out. Just a plain and simple "the more the merrier" approach to get up to the 28 upvotes and to stay there.
Also from those 99 upvotes, I'm pretty sure only the upvotes on posts and some comments (infact I received curation on some comments) paid out. More than those 28 I hope, but way less than 99.
But I don't mind, steembasicincome is giving me way more right now than I possibly can give back.
For the conclusion part, it could be possible, that the problem with the upvotes on comments has a way smaller impact than I'm thinking it has.
The whole dust threshold just showed me how useless my upvotes were for steembasicincome, but receiving bonus shares the same time. Putting my behaviour on everybody else was an exaggeration.
Pushing out the automation (and with that the solution to the dust votes) instead of trying to fix a working system should be the better option right now. 👍
We do appreciate your feedback. In the meantime, I have started checking our comments every couple of days and any comment with dust votes is upvoted just enough to exceed the threshold. It uses a tiny portion of voting power and helps prevent upvotes from our members from being wasted.
That is a way better solution. Nothing is wasted and I don't mind the self upvoting from sbi, it is necessary to maintain the levels and to increase the sustainability. 👍
Can't wait for the automation though. 😁
That makes two of us! but we just brought in another developer, so that should help.