Hello! For those that have been around for awhile - I just want to remind you that this place is complicated - no, you probably don't know everything. For those of you that are new, just keep your mind open because most of the people here don't know everything.
Today I have 2 great myths to dispell for you - and I hope you enjoy!
Myth Number 1: Don't upvote Old Posts
So, while it is true that there will be no adjustment to the payout after 7 days, you can record your name in the official list of upvoters after 7 days, and everyone from that point that views the post will see your vote. Since no rshares can be delivered to old posts you voting power will not drop when voting these old posts
Here is a brief experiment I conducted to prove this to a steemian just this morning.
A nice controlled experiment to show that Old Posts don't count! All you need is the RC's to include your name on the voter list, in the blockchain.
I know these images might be a bit hard to see the tiny numbers, but my voting power goes from 54.72% to 54.82% during the time of the experiment, exactly as if it had continued to recharge and cast no votes whatsoever.
Myth Number 2: Voting Power must be near 100% to maximize efficiency.
Voting power is genius actually, I can vote for as many people as I want each day, and the Voting Power takes care of the division for me! Giving 20, 50% votes at 100% VP is the same as giving 20, 100% votes at 50% VP! It doesn't matter which way you multiply them, the money always comes out the same way.
There is only one thing you can do to lower your efficiency: stay at 100%
So it is quite ironic that the misconception has users huddled around 100%, almost certain loosing out on more than if they just voted for everyone they wanted and let the VP sort it out.
I should mention a caveat:
If you have a very low amount of SP, dropping your VP % fraction too much can cause some rounding errors, and make votes not work right. This may have been fixed in a recent hardfork, there was talk about a zero level vote I seem to recall when they put the 1.2 SP tax on each vote....