Firstly, you're welcome. It takes all strokes and styles 😜  

> Incidentally, I have my own biases and I also want to retain the ability to self-vote my content, given I have put nearly $50,000 into Steem.

I fear this is far too much the motivation of users here. It's like the goose has just started laying golden eggs and everyone is thinking "why not?!"

But really we all know this is a glitch in the system that has to be corrected. Can you honestly imagine self voting continuing as it is now? I'm preparing stats on this and be sharing them soon. @sean-king imagines we are all rational and I saw [you were right to tentatively disagree on this point](https://steemit.com/steem/@sean-king/life-ain-t-fair-and-neither-is-steem-deal-with-it-and-self-vote-away#@lexiconical/re-sean-king-life-ain-t-fair-and-neither-is-steem-deal-with-it-and-self-vote-away-20170707t150330219z). People have burned things down to the ground for a less lucrative payday.

Self voting of larger stakeholders just shows new minnows that they're even farther from reaching great SP and influence. If these guys at the top can basically pay themselves there's less for them. Though maybe I'm wrong and they will actually want to be the rich guy paying themselves too. It will all be aspirational though as no one will be able to build up their SP except by buying in because there are much less votes going outward to others!

> My main objection is indeed that this will not stop the issue. [etc]

Okay we're really taking this on board, it's a big point a lot of people are making. While I thought initially that _some_ movement towards a solution would be a step at least (i.e. removing self voting as an operation) that it does not also deal with sock puppets is crucifying us. We're working on a proposal that would do both.

For the sake of argument, how would you react if I told you we had it solved for both cases? Are you too tied to your bias or could you see yourself supporting it?