I think taking the middle ground is the best as one wants to get a good ROI as an investor. So, it's ok if one votes himself 2 or 3 times a day on his own posts but consuming all of one's voting power on it's own and not voting any other will also result in a lower ROI. Think of that in this way if all the whales start to vote just themselves and they have not much of voting power left to upvote a good piece of content or even if they have they don't want to consume it on others coz this way the next day there voting power is not gonna reach 100%. So, what's gonna happen?
Only 1000 or so people gonna show up in trending pages and there will be nothing lower chances for anyone else to get the same visibility as the whales. Result will be same sort of content every week for the genuine readers and when something gets monotonous it becomes boring. Result will be lower readership that means more inactive users, less faith in the community and thus it falls to the ground.
So, it's best to do both. Thank you for sharing your thoughts. Keep doing that. :)
The trending page? I rarely look it. Sometimes I forget to check it for a week because I'm too busy interacting with people I follow and great comments on my posts. I agree though, balance is key.
Yup I know you must not have the time as you have quite a following but i was talking about from a readers perspective coz not everybody at steemit is planning to be an author. Some are purely here to find quality content and we can only provide them with that if we keep some balance.