Hey sorry, I didn't want to come off that way, too :D
I think I'm also not the best person to explain the technicality behind the "voting time window", but @acidyo has published a post regarding the best curation techniques (https://steempeak.com/curation/@acidyo/curation-tips) and he also mentions that @jga knows all the technical stuff behind it.
I think we are in the same boat, I'm also not fully understanding how it works and yeah now it will all change again anyways :D
But how I understood it that after the HF21 change it will be most profitable for curators, to vote after 5 minutes instead of 15 ;)
Yes, that is what I heard too!
I'm rather optimistic about HF21, there is a lot of negativity around it but I think people are jumping the gun because they can't know if it will be bad until it gets here tomorrow... It can't be that bad I doubt Steemit would do something to jeopardize the platform.
We shall see. :)