Should an author upvote own post or not, that is the question?

I see a lot of people talking about whether or not an author should have to the ability upvote his or her own post.

I am not going to address that issue specifically, but rather a simple setting that may help with this ongoing concern.

I believe the default "Upvote post" setting should be removed or defaulted to unselected for the following reasons:

1. A default setting should never force someone to do something, ever!

I want the freedom to choose to participate. Have you ever filled out an online form with an option checkbox that was selected by default? I hate that!

I want the choice to optin, I do not want to have to opt out. Sure give me the box to upvote for myself, but leave it blank (always). I believe it best to err on missing out then forcing someone to participate.

Disclaimer: I know full well that I can deselect the box at anytime. And I realize that whatever I choose last time is what defaults this time. I appreciate the convenience of not choosing every setting for every post, but something is different about the default upvote post (in my opinion).

2. New Steemian users may not even realize or remember that the upvote post setting was selected.

Ok! So maybe the new users are smarter than I was when I started, but I did not spend much time thinking about the settings when I first arrived on the Steemit scene.

I wanted to create content and be rewarded for it. I wanted to reward others for their content.

And so I did not realize that maybe I had fallen into "unacceptable practices" until the whole Steemian universe starting talking about this issue. This is an important issue, and I need to think about how I will play this out.

Remember that new users do not have the ability you select how much vote power they are giving to each vote. Well, at least I don't have that ability. Honestly, I rarely look at those settings, because at this time, they don't have much impact on me.

I know that I want 50% going to Steem Power and 50% going to Steem Dollars. Past that, I don't have too many other options.

3. Self votes take away our ability to strengthen others.

If Steemit is truly a community, then our guided actions should be thinking outwardly instead of inwardly. By changing the default of "Upvote post" to not selected, we state our community's position on helping others first.

If I post 10 stories in one day, and forget to uncheck the "upvote post" box then I have used up all of my voting power. Any upvotes after that will not be as powerful.

Final thoughts

1. I do not see the "Don't vote for yourself" as a simple and fast rule. I can think of situations where upvoting for yourself actually benefits others.
2. I do not fault you if you decided to upvote your self. As best as I can remember, Steemit is still a community that values freedom.
3. It seems like this issue is more noticeable when you have a higher value upvote. A minnow many not have noticed this issue prior to the HF.
4. I am not asking that the Upvote Post option be removed, I just think the positioning and of the option and the defaults setting needs to be reviewed.

Let me know what you think. Please upvote and resteem if you think this is an issue that we need to address as a Steemit community.

And by the way, I deselected the "upvote post" checkbox (at least for now).