Welcome to Steem HF 19!

Hi everyone and welcome to Steem HF19! For those of you who don't know, HF19 is an abbreviation for "Hard Fork 19" which in lay terms is basically a point in time when the block signing server operators (witnesses) reach consensus that and the blockchain should continue down the path of this new blockchain with updated features.

So what does HF19 mean for you?

Well besides some minor bug fixes, the main feature of HF19 is increased voting power for the minnows (newbies on Steem), your vote now is 4 times stronger, which means you give 4 times more to the posts and comments you vote, but on the flip side your voting power will be impacted 4 times more as well. be careful of this if you subscribe to any trails or autovoting services, @steemvoter posted about this recently on a post entitled Hardfork impact on Voting and Vote Power, I recommend you reduce your usual voting power on your trails and autobots to 1/4, so if you were voting 100%, change it to 25%.

screenshot of steemvoter.com rule at 25% voting power

If you are voting manually, you can use the vote slider to set your voting power to 25%, I don't think new users have this slider and can only vote 100%, I presume you have to have 500 SP (Steem Power) or more [citation needed]

So what if I don't take action and remain voting like I used to?

Well you end up like me, I was too busy to change my voting % so woke up this morning to find....

Lol, only 23% voting power left! Oh well I'm happy some people got benefit out of it, for the people!!!

So how much will my vote give an author?

Well... that all depends on how many people voted before you and your voting power at the time, if many people voted on the post already your vote will dramatically increase the post value. If your voting power is above 90% you will give near to the maximum amount your vote can muster, going down to 80% VP is fine too, some even say 60%.

At my 23% voting power this is what I was able to give a new author by voting 100%, here you can see the post of the author @engineernwankwo before I voted with my full 23% voting power left:

And here it is after I voted with my 54 000 Steem Power account at full power with only 23% voting power left:

Just under $15 given to the author, I would guess at 90%+ voting power I would give around $50 on a post, I guess I won't know now for a while, lol :)

All liquid rewards from this post will be going to @steempact, changing the world one post at a time!