No need to apologize for a long reply when it's a good one! You're right on most parts here and have cleared thought about this community. There will always be someone trying to game the system, it's just life, but with the right tools in place this will be at a minimum. As others have stated community action is nessesory for this all to work and we are building that now. Optional declined payout on self votes I think could really be useful and give an option to be less greedy but not give up all of your rewards. I would personally do this every time because I do want the visibility created by my self upvote, although not very big compared to some of these whales, still impactful.

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