To my knowledge there is no evidence that self voting inhibits growth, and I do not know how one would attempt to establish that. My basis for sadkitten was primarily on the use case of the platform, specifically to evaluate the contribution of others. This pillar has been progressively eroded and while the latest statements do not create a further action they send a powerful message and notice of intent for the de facto leaders of the blockchain.
If this leadership changes it would be time to revise my position here but I don't see it happening any time soon, though I'm inspired by the talk of community devs lately.
Yes, with the interpretation that voting in principle is for crowdsourcing the evaluation of content. And self voting in most cases is an inefficient allocation of where rewards "should be" going, e.g. in a way that promotes growth of the platform. Admittedly this isn't evidence based thinking though.
Posted using Partiko Android