Sort:  

I meant 'get in early' before others compete for the same curation.. But yes, I understand that it's not optimal to vote for a post that's already at the top.
It seems like there is very likely to be a vote sniping contest to see who can do the autovoting at the optimal time. We shall see.

It seems like there is very likely to be a vote sniping contest to see who can do the autovoting at the optimal time.

Probably.
Anyway, I never cared when to vote on a post and I still won't care. :)

It seems like there is very likely to be a vote sniping contest to see who can do the autovoting at the optimal time. We shall see.

Absolutely. That is by design.

I'm talking about sniping of voting on posts just because you know they spend a lot on bidbots or are whales and self upvote.

Yes that is by design.

So what is the selling point and usefulness of people competing for significant rewards as a result of being able to place a vote the earliest, but closest to 5 minutes for posts that defy proof of brain by using bid bots etc?

You snipe at 5 minutes. Now someone else snipes at 4:57. They only give up 1% of rewards but gain far more than that by being ahead of you. You now decide it is worth it to snipe at 4:54. Repeat. As a result, much of the curation rewards on useless curation is then returned to the pool to be used elsewhere.

This already happens BTW. Many votes on known-payout posts are made around 5-8 minutes I believe (I haven't checked the exact numbers recently) even though the penalty timer currently runs to 15m, returning curation to the pool. That part won't change much with HF21, although the higher absolute curation rewards may drive a bit more activity.

I understand that situation, yes - though I don't have any real world data on it. I was just thinking that a significant increase in the amount of curation rewards available would lead to a variety of attempts to focus on gaming this aspect of the system. Hopefully people find it pointless and do real curation instead - we shall see!