Hey @markgritter, I think I've seen you on musing/quora before. I finished right behind you in the Redfish league. @paulag suggested a new initiative here So I thought I would drop by and see what you have going on.
This post seems to be doing quite well, and is very informative. To add to this I am pretty sure that @cheneats is using a strategy, I actually think it's a bot they hit a lot of my posts and generally at a time when payout will be the highest. I think the algorithm gives a bit of a bonus on the first several upvotes a post gets. So by being one of the first to upvote at between 20-30 minutes, it should maximize the vote power/payout.
It would be interesting to see if @cheneats only votes on typically small payout posts of say 3 or 4 cents, this would also maximize the percentage of curation for a small upvote, yet would not really risk it being seen as gaming the system.