How I deal with all that Dust,
let's take a look at the whole process, step by step...
1. Finding Dust
I have a list of accounts that I follow, I call them my dusty buddies, and I keep checking their account-history several times throughout the day. Whenever they receive or make a vote, I'll check the content receiving that vote for it's total rewards.
If the rewards are not sufficiently above the dust-threshold, I'll put that content into my task-list as potential dust. I will also check on a few other things before adding the task, though:
- is the author/voter on my blacklist?
- was the post/comment self-voted by the author?
- are there any flags present on this content?
- is the payout option declined?
Content with total rewards under $0.035 passing those basic checks will get added to my task-list for further processing. This acts as a generous buffer against price and reward-pool fluctuations. Better be safe than sorry and I'll run all these checks again before upvoting anyways.
2. Prioritizing Dust
In order to distribute my fluff-support fairly, every piece of dusty content on my task-list gets a dynamically calculated priority score. The score is based on a task's urgency, that's the amount of time left until payout, and it gets modified by the task-owner's support-bonus and quota-offset according to their account-score.
2.1. Quota-Offsets
I monitor the amount of fluff I've successfully delivered to all of my buddies individually. As their usage-quotas grow, their remaining dust will slowly lose priority accordingly to give way to other users. In the spirit of "giving is better than receiving", my buddies' outgoing votes have a lower impact on their total quota-offset than their own dusty rewards being fluffed up.
2.2. Support-Bonuses
If someone is delegating or donating to the cause, all their dust I'm monitoring for them will enjoy additional priority. This allows my supporters to build up higher usage quotas before their dust actually loses priority and gives them preferential treatment as long as their quota remains below average.
2.3. Account-Scoring
To fulfil the core idea of supporting bottom-up growth and fostering genuine engagement, additional modifiers get applied to the above bonuses and offsets: Small accounts supporting my operation with a delegation or donation despite their limited funds will get an additional bump on their priority bonuses. Inversely, large account holders who are enjoying my services without giving back any (or only very little) support will see their quota-offset growing slightly faster. Also, users showing excessive self-voting quotas will have their dust priorities additionally lowered.
3. Fluffing Up Dust
Finally, whenever my voting power has recharged to a comfortable level, I'll go and fluff-up some dust. Any item on my task-list that has less than 36 hours left until payout qualifies to be fluffed up next. The task with the highest priority on record will get served immediately.
If a task passes the 12 hours mark before getting fluffed up, it will be considered as timed-out and will be taken off the task-list. Upvoting content that's beyond the 12h mark does not yield the full voting-efficiency anymore and would be a waste of my voting power.
Before actually delivering my upvotes, I will run the full set of basic checks again to make sure the content still meets all given requirements. Then I'll give my vote precisely sized to raise the combined rewards on the content to $0.025, comfortably above the dust-threshold. I'm adding a little bit extra here just to be safe against any reward-fluctuations during the final hours until payout.
That's basically all there is to it. @fraenk has been tweaking and iteratively implementing the above process, vaguely based on a max-min fairness model, while continuously monitoring how this affected the overall distribution of support amongst my buddies.
The description of my functionality here has been simplified as much as possible while still illustrating all aspects going into it. The most crucial part here is certainly the prioritization, a lot of numbers and scales come together here and we will take a deeper look into how that plays out in the next post.
My service is basically Free!
If you are a small user and you miss the opportunity to give some appreciation to the best comments on your posts, I'm here to help you!
If you're the one leaving those great comments and you're receiving dusty votes from well meaning users, I'd like to help with that, too!
Or maybe, despite having enough SP, sometimes you're just spreading your love too far and too wide to stay above the dust requirements... don't stop, that's awesome! Let me try and help you a bit!
Apply to get on my watch-list by commenting here or apply via discord.
I do reserve the right to scan your account for spam and/or excessive self-voting, but any genuine user creating or participating in engagement on this platform is more than welcome here!
If you have a little SP to spare, please consider making a small delegation.
And if you're ever disappointed in me, you can cancel your delegation at any time and you won't have lost a penny.
This is an experiment in solidarity and community-support, built to foster bottom-up growth and genuine engagement on the platform, any attempted abuse of my services will result in permanent blacklisting.
THANKS TO ALL MY SUPPORTERS!
They are the ones making this possible.
| @reggaemuffin | 2500SP |
|---|---|
| @justtryme90 | 1500SP |
| @drakos | 1000SP |
| @suesa | 500 SP |
| @fraenk | 250 SP |
| @felt.buzz | 150 SP |
| @wilhb81, @ericet, @bryan-imhoff, @drakernoise, @freebornangel | 100 SP |
| @marty-art, @dickturpin, @katerinaramm, @brandt, @linnyplant, @abh12345, @bengy, @simplymike | 50 SP |
| @insaneworks, @bashadow, @elizacheng, @yo-yo, @zekepickleman, @bjornb, @felipejoys, @googlyeyes, @davidke20, @mermaidvampire | 25+SP |
| @ewkaw, @wadera, @steemkitten, @googlybot, @anthonyadavisii, @blacklux, @for91days, @jpederson96, @professorbromide, @ackhoo, @newbiegames, @rentmoney, @teamcn-shop, @sparkesy43, @bucipuci, @phoenixwren, @mathowl, @steemeow, @cuddlekitten, @xlisto, @norwegianbikeman | 10-20 SP |
| @orkin420, @gmatthe2, @hockney, @cherryzz, @markgritter, @mongshter, @marblely, @krakonos, @ritxi, @themanwithnoname | <10 SP |
Supporters get priority treatment for their incoming and outgoing dust
The majority of my total SP is coming from the generous support of some steem-witnesses,
if you're enjoying my services you should consider giving their wittnesses your approval:
@reggaemuffin, @stem.witness, @drakos
You can delegate here: 5SP | 10SP | 25SP | 50SP | 100SP