Since then the situation has changed though and it's much more rewarding to vote on yourself than it was. I like your story because it shows this clearly. Now what we have is people going through the first step (up voting themselves) and not having the realization that it's better (and more rewarding) to vote for others. I still think we need a system level adjustment to improve this situation. That's just for new people - I think experienced members are seeing self voting as interest payments on their investment, which was never the intended purpose of voting.

I used to vote myself as a witness but I became convinced that the purpose of voting is primarily to vote for others, since a vote is necessarily evaluative and we are not qualified to judge our own work or our own suitability as witness. Until such a time as this is corrected on a system level I make the example of what I think should be the case.

As I am engaged in the controversial work of disagreeing with self voting and taking action against it, I also need to be sure that I am "practicing what I preach", which I am happy to do, it makes sense to me.

Thanks for the comment and question.