Gwern (79) and Vaniver (66) show significantly more upvotes than the next in line

Thanks. That's interesting. I hadn't noticed that. They even score higher than some people who posted earlier, and with similar quality posts.

If upvotes are handed out according to the rule and logically in order of occurrence the vots should roughly read n, n-1, n-2,

...At first I was going to say I think it would be more of an exponential decrease since most people take the survey in the first few days and I doubt many people diligently keep track of new comments, but then I remembered that the rate of new "I took the survey" comments themselves decrease exponentially, probably at a similar rate, which cancels out much of the effect. Oh well. This does make the situation less unfair.