Previously we emphasized tipping good content early, finding it before others, but the truth is, that any tip on frontpage content can potentially give you a share of the weekly rewards.
Here are some tips you could be employing to get you on the weekly rewards list:
Tip the frontpage,you still earn rewards
You don't have to catch a post early. If you tip a post that's already on LIT, your tip still counts toward the weekly curator rewards pool, as long as the post was made this week and finishes the week in the top half of content by net votes.
Two things determine your share:
- How much you tip more XMR tipped on a winning post means a bigger share.
- How early you tipped it this is the "early multiplier." Curators are ranked by the order they tipped a post, and earlier tippers get a bigger weight (roughly
1/ln(rank + e − 1)). So the first few tippers on a post that takes off earn the most per XMR; later tips on the same post still count, just at a smaller weight.
Tipping comments counts too
Curator rewards aren't just for posts, tipping a comment that does well this week earns you a share of the pool the same way. Comments and posts are scored in two separate buckets, and each gets half the weekly curator weight, so you're only competing against other comment tippers, not against the big frontpage posts. The same rules apply: tip XMR, tip something from this week, and the earlier you back a comment before it takes off, the bigger your weight.
So there's real value in tipping good content even after it's visible, but the earlier you back something before it blows up, the more your tip is worth.
“finishes the week in the top half of content by net votes” <- that’s easy to game: hold votes until Sunday, pile onto what’s already near the cut, or nudge a rival under the median in the last hours. It also trains people to wait: why post/upvote on Monday if Sunday frontpage tips still pay?
“Most time of the week in the top half” is better IMO: reward what stayed good, not what won the bell. Measure share of the post’s own lifetime above the median, not raw hours, or Monday posts just win by existing longer :)
(still gameable though: posting later in the week is easier to qualify: a Saturday post only has to hold the half for a short(er) window).
Two things make this not as gameable as it may first seem:
On "most time in the top half", I like it in theory, but we'd have to track how every post's score moves all week, adding complexity, and like you said, it also has its own quirks.
I just upvote as a like. If someone does a cool post. I upvote for the aura for the culture for the lols.
This is the correct way to do it. You shouldn't have to think too hard about it or "optimize" your tips. Just keep doing what you're doing!
Take a look at the power of tipping: #338970
stasher and untraceable earned most of the rewards despite a 50% handicap just because they tipped a lot of posts and comments. I gave the rewards back of course, but this goes to show the impact it can have.