RE: What if we encouraged self-voting?
@lukestokes, I think something else that might be worth bringing into this discussion is the fact that a lot of people create great content... get lots of comments, but then they don't curate the comment section of their own posts.
On any given day, probably half the upvotes I cast are for other people's comments on my own posts. I strongly believe that's central to how (for example) you and I create engagement. But some write a great post, get 300 upvotes and 100+ comment and the O.P. barely has a presence "tending" the replies to their post.
That would be a case where I'd apply the "once in a while" self-upvote... I guess I lack the patience or state of Zen to put a lot of effort into a response, only to have it dwell, unread, near the bottom of a pile of "nice post" and "your gr8 pls upvote me" filler...
Yeah, that's a good example and I've done the same before (and been flagged for it by Bernie... hahah). I guess I wonder why people spend so much time on crowded threads like that only to be ignored? Where's the fun in that?
Some more popular authors don't have the time (or even voting power) ti curate all their comments. I get that. At some point it just becomes too much.