I do self upvote, I see it as self promotion. As you said, if I don't upvote for myself, who will? Currently my voting power is 0$, so I don't gain much by doing it, but it feels nice to have that 1 vote there.

I don't get what is the big deal with self upvotes and why there's so much people complaining about it. If big users upvote their own posts, don't they deserve it? I mean, they worked hard to reach that level. As long as they give back by upvoting other people post, I don't see the problem.

Also, I just learned that upvoting comments is important too, I didn't know that, I thought that by replying was enough. I'll start to giving upvotes in comments too.

Thank you for this post, it was very informative.