Interesting stats.
Whales really do hold our destiny in their hands (flukes?). They can vote mainly for their own benefit or choose to 'bless' minnows with a big payout. How they behave will affect the future of Steemit. I know a lot of people feel it's rigged and that will put some off. I can see that there are efforts to share the bounty more by rewarding good content. I'm hoping that and adjustments to the algorithms will create an economy that will attract good content producers. That's what it needs to succeed.
A lot of posts may not get noticed in the first 24 hours. They may get 'reblogged' later and I hope that will result in them gaining votes. I think it should be possible to earn on posts beyond 4 weeks as they will still appear on Google after that and may still have value then.
This post is focusing on when whales upvote, in general, relative to a post's publication time. It's almost impossible with this data to say why the whales vote in this way. Since there's no curation penalty after 30 minutes, it makes sense that most whales vote at this point. You could ask that since whales have already made it, why aren't they more altruistic, sacrificing their own curation reward for others?
I don't think posts should be rewarded after 4 weeks because that's probably not good for the steemit economy. Don't ask me why, it's just a feeling. I agree that the reblog feature will help get posts "out there", and it emphasizes the importance of building a good following rather than trying to "get rich quick".
I realise we can't deduce intention from this data. Thanks for doing this anyway. More data is always a good thing and I'm sure people will draw their own conclusions. Cheers