I will skip to my arguments ;)
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!
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.
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!
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?
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.
The 50% rule is a decent approach for many.
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.
With organic, non-circle-jerk voting. I generally won't downvote. This platform hasn't been that way since I have been here.
Where I draw the line is with paying bots to upvote one's own comments.
I find it strange.
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