Hi @lukestokes
Earlier today I saw another this post:
Hard Fork 20 Changes

Hard fork 20 is changing the way the reverse auction works and cutting the first 30 minutes of a vote down to 15 minutes. If you vote in the first 15 minutes, instead of it going to the author, it will be returned to the reward pool. This will remove some of the self-voting, at least the early self-voting.

I am wondering what the actual consequences would be regarding the reward pool and if this would give Reward Pool Mining Bots much of an advantage over manual voters.
And I am also wondering if such decisions would be better made through an open democratic system where everyone can see how decisions have been arrived at and who the players are in the making of such decisions.