Thanks for the comment, I'm happy you found this even though it's an old post. Just about the topic, I've started to upvote myself again in part of my posts, as it doesn't only give it the upvotes but posts get certain visibility based on the upvotes.

I'm still not proud of it when I do it, but I can see why people are doing it.

Still this is a sharing community and a social media built on interacting with others. People should focus on upvoting others more, based on whatever reasons. Like I'm all up to the fact many people avoid upvoting those who upvote themselves or if they upvote or don't upvote for any reason X.

I'm happy you seem to have a good sense of what you want to do and how you want the community to develop. People like you are the power that can change Steemit to be an even better place, please keep up the good work :)