Let's Talk about Self-Voting

The idea of Proof of Brain is that content and curation should be rewarded rather than bots.

See Also other discussions of community conduct here

It's come to my attention that there has been some self-voting around. I don't do it but I've seen some friction on the issue.

It's an issue we should all agree to as a community. If self-voting turns out to be not such a bad thing after all, we should inform others and we should all self-vote. If self-voting is going to cause flags on accounts, we should all be aware of it on the outset. We should inform others and all refrain from self-voting. The biggest risk of self-voting is that it might cause your audience to stop voting for your content.

I know its generally ugly to tell others what to do but if the self-voting side wins in the community than the one who flags will be seen as a bad actor, and the one who doesn't self vote becomes the idiot in the room. On the other hand if it goes the other way, then the one who self-votes becomes the bad actor and the idiot in the room is those of us who never bothered to warn the self-voter.

Self voting has probably been beaten to death as a topic on Steem and Hive and we can get some wisdom from old posts on the subject matter.

Over on the Blurt blockchain, they are slagging Hive for the practice of flagging minnows for self-voting.

https://www.steemfiles.com/blurtpower/@offgridlife/there-is-nothing-wrong-with-self-voting-if-you-eventually-use-your-blurt-piwer-to-reward-others

To save you a read of that post, the argument is that it drives new users and those of small stake away from Hive. It's also hard for minnows to get started and to build up their stake.

If my job as a curator is to up-vote content and I happen to produce that content. Arguably, I should up-vote that content rather than make an exception because its my own work. However, there is a conflict of interest in me deciding to vote on my own work.

The whole problem with the early distribution of POB was with someone who self-voted a comment. I have refrained from self-voting because it just seemed wrong somehow.

I would like to survey the community. So, I will make a comment below with a saying "No to self votes" and another comment with vote saying "Yes to self votes." A lack of votes will mean nobody cares and I'll self vote all of my posts. You can vote 1% if you don't think I should get rewards for the voting boxes.