Perhaps it would help to inform you that, as my profile shows, I have been here since the end of August last year. I don't mean by that 'and so I am more qualified than you' at all, and there's no intention of that being any kind of pissing contest either.

I have been also dealing with the same interface, with the same mechanisms, and it was since HF19 as I started to see self-upvoted comments, which by the way almost never happened before, except as like on my post about @timcliff's response to my raising an issue about the vote slider for minnows, you can see myself and @pfunk discuss this directly in our comment thread, as @pfunk upvoted his post in order to give it more visibliity.

This justification is a lot more robust than any involving motivations to invest in the platform. However, it is wrong, because in doing this, he made the assumption that I needed to have it elevated. But it may well even simply be that because he and I have not had extensive direct interactions with each other, he was not aware of the fact that I read every single comment and I then give my opinion in the form of upvotes, their omission, or a comment in response that attempts to address the points in the comment.

You are all getting to know me better in this process, which is precisely what I believe I have to do to gain the edge over the largely self contained circles in the higher levels of the Witness schedule, in order to move upwards. The people, everyone, even myself, have a need of guidance, and I believe that this is a proper attribute of someone with the trust and power invested in them that is required of a Witness.

I believe that to some extent, this 'circle jerk' 'voting for only friends' thing you talk about, equally applies to the witness schedule, to some extent, and this is also not a net benefit to the community. The witnesses should be held as accountable as a minister of government. They can't be using their inside knowledge and power to enrich themselves in the domain they are supposed to be governing for the benefit of others. Witnesses get paid a lot and witnesses should be the consensually agreed most level headed, and caring people in the community.