Thank you for this, Jan!
It's an amazing feeling to be acknowledged by someone as having added value, however small. I can't tell you how energized I am by people like you and this growing, amazing platform we are on.
Btw, I used @randowhale services as soon as I saw "unexpected money" in my balance :) and I got two upvotes that have brought in, as of this moment, around $15. So, that's cool!
As for your questions, I think rewarding comments could become bad if the emphasis is on the reward, but as long as your mission and intention is in the number one spot, the energy of that will make it a beneficial experience.
We're in the wild west here, figuring out the world we inhabit and building it as we go along...exciting stuff!!!
Cool! Great multiplier effect. Keep in mind that it is useful apparently at the extremes:
very early to seed the pot a little and start your snowball or as they remarked here in the comments very late so the amount doesn't drop too much!
yeah, as long as I keep it manual I should be able to avoid the gaming aspect, I don't want to do random awards since I don't think it reflects recognition for effort.
If it gets really huge maybe it is worth considering splitting it up amongst various people, although it would be awesome to be able to award two prizes of say 500 SBD, imaging the PR value ;)
Yeah, I see the payout dropping, cent by cent, but luckily, the two posts are in their last day or so.
That would be great PR, it would reverberate through Steemit. I think what you're doing is awesome & I am very excited to see the results of your efforts. I'm cheering for you!