Self-voting: With the click of a button, I can guarantee myself at least a couple dozen cents on anything I post or comment so long as I don't reduce my vote power too significantly.
As a matter of fact, at the time of this writing, if I chose to direct all of my voting power toward myself and use it in a sustainable manner, I can give myself about $6.50 every single day. Actually more, since the value of SBD is currently much higher than what appears on our post rewards here on Steemit.
Self-voting is a technically legitimate use of the platform. Self voting is part of Steemit's design and the system in no way attempts to stop it. But just because behaviour is allowed doesn't mean that behaviour is good.
Steemit itself doesn't promote or stifle a user's actions. They can self-vote, spam, plagiarize, and do all sorts of things that could generally be considered "wrong" or at the very least, "uncool." Since there are no "rules" for or against any specific behaviours on Steemit, it's up to the community to determine right from wrong.
In this post, I'm going to share details about my own voting patterns as well as my opinions on self-voting in general. I invite all of my readers to share their opinions in the comments.
My Personal History of Self-Voting
If I'm not mistaken, I have 100% upvoted every single blog post I've made on Steemit. I keep the "Upvote post" box checked off.
Regarding my comments, I've probably only upvoted a number that I could count on two hands. I will usually only upvote a comment as a way to "pin it" near the top. This is something I'll occasionally do with comments on my own blog posts when I believe a comment has relevant information that all readers of the blog entry.
For example, I recently hosted an art contest which ended when the post paid out. As soon as the payout happened, I could no longer edit the post, so I made a comment to announce that it had ended and upvoted it with enough power to ensure that it would rise to the top of the comments if viewed in "trending" order.
My history of self voting isn't much of a story. There are no changing behaviours or patterns. I know what I'm comfortable with, I have my own personal guidelines and I stick to them.
When is Self-Voting Okay?
Let me say again that everything that follows is only my personal opinion. I'm open to hearing your thoughts in the comments.
I believe that upvoting your own blog posts is a legitimate return-on-investment. You've put a lot of time and possibly money into Steemit. It's only just that you can guarantee yourself some rewards for your labours.
If I was in a position where I knew I had a large following of powerful voters, I probably wouldn't bother self-voting and would save all of my voting power for others. But I'm not there yet and I want a return on my investment. Maybe that's a little selfish, but I think it's fair.
When is Self-Voting Not Okay?
I'm not sure I can give a well-reasoned explanation for this opinion, but I generally think it's really tacky when people upvote their own comments. I don't know why I think that, and I'm sure those users could offer the same ROI arguments that I made above regarding blog posts.
But do you know what self-voting behaviour is absolutely terrible? When you leave a worthless comment on someone's blog post, upvote your own comment 100% without bothering to give the blog post a vote. Hell, it doesn't even need to be a worthless comment. Either way, it sends the message to the Steemit blogger that their content isn't valuable. The only thing that this upvoter finds valuable and worth his voting power is himself.
I want Steemit to be about community. That kind of behaviour is selfish garbage.