Cool project, but not for me.
I do quality posts, and I do upvote them, why should I not?
Appreciate the feedback. Completely eliminating self-votes was not originally part of our plan. We acknowledge that there are legitimate uses of the self-vote.
Although eliminating DVs completely eliminates downvote-abuse, it undoubtedly will increase upvote-abuse. The two biggest forms of upvote abuse are self-voting worthless posts and circle-voting worthless votes. After considering the pro's and con's, we decided completely eliminating self-votes (and stating so up front) would yield a better overall experience for the community.
Personally, I usually reduce my upvotes when I see someone has self-voted. I know I'm not the only one who does that. There are folks who provide pretty good content but consistently self-vote 100% and I completely ignore them -- and prior to my realizing what they were doing, my upvotes were far larger than their self-votes. I have no doubt that they have lost more than they've gained due to their self-voting.
So, you might find that self-votes actually cost you more than they benefit you.
With that said, we will definitely be experimenting with alternative ways for tribe members to promote their own posts.
If you post to Proof of Brain, be sure to use either the #no-vyb or #novyb tag if you are planning to self-vote. That will enable you to earn POB rewards while not getting muted from VYB for self-voting.
I would encourage you, though, to periodically post to Verify Your Brain and see if your non-self-voted posts (on POB and VYB) earn more rewards overall than when you self-vote on POB. If you do that, please post the results.
I curate according to 1) the efforts made, 2) the quality and 3) the value provided, not if the author did self-upvote. I am not that convinced that this criterion is that much relevant, like you pointed out. Because the overall target is to incentivize good content, right?
By the way, all my voting power comes from my own $$ invested, so I basically can upvote what I want.