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 believe this is a step in the right direction. 50/50 split seems interesting as well but not sure if it could be gamed through circular voting. Thanks for throwing down your insight. I'm pretty hard line against self-voting my posts/comments above others.

The way I figure, we need to promote thoughtful participation and contribution from the whole gamut of users. It's kind of like having a group conversation and maybe there're that one person that talks over others because they believe what they have to say is more important. Maybe it is and maybe it is but I think we both can agree that it shouldn't necessarily be the $$$ in your pocket that says whether something is meaningful or not.

I'm not upvoting this comment. It will get where it needs to go and read by whom is intended to read it. If nothing else @themarkymark will read it, because he said he would. :)

By the way, thanks for supporting @steemflagrewards!