Have to resteem this post because I agree with you that articles on Steem should be rewarded as long as it is still generating value.

There are so many occasions where I read a useful tutorial/guide on Steem that has past the reward window. At that point, I will be having a dilemma whether to vote. On one hand, I know that voting does not yield reward to the author. But on the other hand, I still want to appreciate the work.

Recently I used Steem Forever to reward an old post by @famigliacurione. It is a story written based on NextColony, a game on Steem. Such posts are timeless and generate value perpetually. They should be rewarded as long as they are discovered and voted on. Steem Forever makes that possible, however, it is not seamless and requires voters to make an extra effort to use it.

I think your 2nd option is achievable, just perhaps not to reward based on views. I think it is technically not possible to reward based on views because Steem is designed to be an open platform. There can be multiple front-ends that can be used to view the content and there is no reliable way to capture and aggregate all these views from different sources.

That being said, I think posts that are voted on after the reward window, should still receive rewards. I do not think it is technically impossible to implement that, it is just the possible abuse that is holding us back. For example, someone might abuse the system by spamming accounts and vote with the delegated SP from Steemit.

To combat such abuse, we can set the reward curve for votes beyond the reward window to be diminishing by time. In other words, the later you vote, the lower the vote value. Just not zero value.