It is not possible to advocate a position, and still have the respect of the community, while condoning the violation of that position.

It is precisely the elimination of the 'low hanging fruit' that is addressed and targeted by this current project. I think it says a rather large amount about it being the correct position that the most egregious self voter, is like a mosquito with zero reputation kick to their giant voting power, and so quick to act without considering more than 5 minutes into the future about what happens next.

We discussed the option of such as a cumulative or windowed averaging that allows say, 10%, 20% or some arbitrary line between. If the protocol needs self voting, a rational, 100% applicable defence must exist, or you create a slippery slope where the very same rationale gives you 50,000 different possibilities and no way to agree.

But if, instead, we narrow our criteria so that if it cannot be implemented by a bot, but rather, a simple, universal rule, such as 'may not directly vote upon own content', you see that 'bypassing it with alts' does not violate this simple, automatic rule!

A much simpler ruleset than the cumulative average arbitrary, arbitration-dependent human-dependent and impossible to standardise way of mitigating bad behaviour.

I don't even have to search far to show you an example of how self upvoting to 'alter the sequence of comments' cannot be a justification here: https://steemit.com/steemit/@holoz0r/steemit-licence-plates-are-finally-here

'Lol awesome', voted up to nearly $12?