The topic of self-voting brings about a wide range of responses and emotions!

In this post, I will explain my self-voting strategy and the reasoning behind my decision.

My name is @sumatranate, and I am a self-voter.

There is no reason to deny the truth. I have self-voted and will probably continue to self-vote unless something significant changes - personal conviction, new Steemit rules, community pressure, etc.

I personally believe that self-voting is an acceptable Steemit behavior when done as a part of a balanced voting strategy.

What constitutes a balanced voting strategy?

For me a balance voting strategy ...

• Is Primarily Community Focused
  I am not the center of the Steemit universe. I am one member of a community of people. And if you have not heard me brag about the Steemit community, then shame on me. Steemit has meant a lot to me since I joined in June 2017. I have learned a lot. I have met so many incredible people that I would have never known without Steemit.

  I believe that our voting should reflect a desire to grow our community (both in numbers and in strength). When I first struggled with the idea of self-voting, I made a decision to use 90% or more of my upvotes to benefit others. I was doing a really good job with the 90% to 10% rule until recently.

  Over the last 30 days, I have used about 14% of my votes on myself. If you are interested in learning more about your outgoing voting patterns, check out a valuable tool called Steem Reports. Remember that you can not manage what is not being measured!

  Since finding out this new information, I will be curbing self-votes until I can get back to down to under 10%. Again I am trying to execute a balanced, community-focused voting strategy.

• Allows For Self-Investing
  There are many ways to invest in yourself on Steemit (most of which require time and effort). We all know that building relationships and writing quality articles are important keys to growth.

  One reason why self-voting gets a bad name is because of people who upvote their posts even when the quality of their posts are lacking. If self-voting is a lazy way to self-advance, then we have a problem. But I see things differently when someone is active and engaging in our community and upvotes their post.

  Now having justified self-voting (at least in my own eyes), I know from personal experience that using our votes to build up others can have a significantly larger impact (on ourselves and others) than just self-voting. I may not agree with your position on self-voting (and you may not agree with me either), but we all need to examine our WHY?

  Are you balancing your self-interests of today with the overall good of our community in the future?

• Rarely Allows For Self-Voting Comments
  I do not believe it is good practice to self-vote your comments, especially the short comments that we sometimes get that prove that the person commenting never even read the post.

  But there have been a few occasions when I have self-voted a comment. When I am fully confident that I am giving the best answer to someone's question, then I might self-upvote a comment. My practice is not to self-upvote a comment at 100% but just enough to place my answer high enough in the comment section so that I can add value.

  Again this behavior is rarely acceptable! Just because I think something is valuable does not make it true.

• Does Not Include Automatic Self-Voting
  My upvote post box is not automatically selected.
  

  I believe that self-upvoting should be an intentional, willful decision. Every time we upvote ourselves we should be forced to evaluate the quality of our writing and the intentions of our heart. I want to make sure that if I am choosing myself before others (in the moment), and that I am required to take a moment to make the decision.

Your Turn

It is clear that I did not bridge the divide of self-voting in the Steemit community. This is an important issue, and I appreciate your listening to my thoughts on this matter. Now I would like to hear from you about this topic.

1. Do you feel that it is right or wrong to self-upvote?
2. Has your opinion changed since you first joined Steemit?
3. Are there any scenarios that justify a self-upvote?
4. Do you feel differently about self-voting for post versus comments?

Thanks for stopping by. I look forward to reading your comments.

@sumatranate

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