Thanks for the write-up! This seems to be a popular topic this week.
It all comes out properly in the end. SBI has big robots (or something) figuring all this out.
The algorithm we use for this is actually not very complicated. We track a pending upvote balance for each member and every time you post, it uses 20% of it. When you post more often, the balance decreases (from upvotes) faster than it recharges (from your subscription level and upvoting rewards) so the vote per post shrinks. When you post less often, the opposite happens (faster recharge than usage) so the vote per post grows.
It's similar to how the balance in your bank account jumps after you get paid and then gradually decreases as you spend money, then jumps again the next time you get paid. Except we smooth it out by having the subscription level growth rate happen every 2.4 hours instead of just once per day. That makes the biggest factors causing the per post value swing to be your own posting frequency and the surge you get from upvoting rewards each time an SBI post reaches payout.
Thank you for chiming in, @josephsavage. Very nice explanation. I appreciate these dependable votes so much and I am on the hunt for more :)