I was really surprised to learn that on Tim's post too. Thankfully I generally give people at least .02 when I upvote their comments on my posts already, but it has highlighted for me how important it is to be mindful of it always.
Also, you're right that in responding to an author on their own post when he/she replies to me I will give an upvote if I don't think the conversation needs to continue, but want to express appreciation for their reply. I think it's good you've declined to receive those upvotes, and think that should become an unofficial norm. That way we can all direct more of our upvotes to quality comments that maybe have an upvote on them from an author who can't give .02 with a single vote, even at 100% allocation.
I want to note that I don't agree with you about not upvoting people who have upvoted themselves. This just shows all the more why people should NOT be penalized for upvoting themselves, if that's what it takes to turn a .01 upvote into a .02 upvote!
And I also know that I sometimes will upvote one of my comments just because I know that post author doesn't read all his comments, only the ones at the top of the page!
I also think it is fine apart from this really, so long as the person's overall upvote ratios are no more than 50% going to themselves across their activity on the platform. I think it's most fair to simply upvote a comment you think is good, but I know you and I also disagree about downvoting to express the assessment of an overvalued payout, so I suspect this variance of opinion stems from that one.
Where I draw the line is with paying bots to upvote one's own comments. I gave this a try for a couple weeks that I just didn't have time to post much and was only commenting on the posts of others, but it just didn't feel right to me. Now when I come across a comment where I can see they used an upvote bot I'm like, "really?" LOL
I will skip to my arguments ;)
The reason is ordering the comments section. So self-upvoting means that if I give a 1% vote to all, the self voted comment goes to the top where i might not want it. Now, I have the ability/option to not have that happen so, I might have to adjust (unvote and revote) to get comments back in a suitable order. This can be very expensive for a small account.
It also means larger accounts can hijack the top position, something I don't like if the post doesn't warrant it. So, there are caveats but, if someone hasn't visited my blog before and made this assumption, what does that say about the platform and them? Where do they normally spend their time?
The 50% rule is a decent approach for many.
With organic, non-circle-jerk voting. I generally won't downvote. This platform hasn't been that way since I have been here.
I find it strange.
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