Long term model support and point rewards

With MakerWorld now over a year old a lot of popular and established models have already been downloaded by many users but it’s not clear to me how these models should be supported long term by creators.

Consider a model that is a year old and has several important updates but not enough to warrant a new model version entirely. If the creator updates the existing model and promotes the updated version again do they still gain points for repeat user downloads if several months have passed since there original print? Can it still be boosted if someone already boosted the design months ago? If not then it would seem the best way to handle long term model support would be to upload the updated design as a new model while preserving the old design and linking to the new one.

What are the best practices for updating and supporting models over the period of several years?

Users seem to do both. I got a notification this morning that a model I printed last week was updated. Other times I just came across an updated version because the maker decided to upload it as new. Boosts aren’t an issue as you can Boost anything that has been downloaded as long as it hasn’t been removed from MakerWorld.