I understand... and it makes sense... but still, if our votes are useless on posts with over 7 days, authors already know that their articles will fall into oblivion in just a week, mostly because there's no incentive for other users to read those posts after that time frame...

If Steemit can find a way to change that, I think everyone would benefit. We would get better articles... and readers would not skip posts over 7 days.