A fantastic idea. I have always respected your openness and honesty @themarkymark!
My recommendation - use those powers for good!
Would you:
Close the bidding for one window daily?
Or lower the voting power of each window slightly?
Continuing to be open about how you are doing it is key so that bids can be made appropriately.
Voting on the curation digest is a good idea - it is the traditional 'side-by-side' method (ie Ford and Ford Foundation).
Community projects are the best part of Steemit! with 850 dollar upvote you could even divide the vote 10 or more ways and have a great impact on new comers, getting starteds and small fish of all sizes!
A vote will only add 8-16 minutes to a 2-hour 40-minute window to charge to 100%. The difference is tiny and it will only affect the window during our vote, the 9 other windows /day would be unaffected.
It won't take anything away from the votes (they will still be based on 100% voting power), will just make the window stay open for a few minutes longer.
I pay around $8,500 USD/day for our voting power, so I can't really close a window per day and use an entire vote.
I see, yes of course it depends on margins! A small part of one vote .
If Im not wrong this would also start rotating the voting window times, By having a 24 hour 16 minute 'daily' rotation. Sounds cool!
No, it would just make a window a little longer. Say for example we just did our votes, we should be around 98% voting power. It will take 2 hours 40 minutes to recharge to 100%. If we then do a manual 5% vote, it will add another 8 minutes to the voting window, so the total window will be 2 hours 48 minutes. It will still reach 100% and everyone will get the same value vote as they would without the vote.