You'd have to ask the front end developers. Though you seem to be arguing with a straw man. Have you actually looked into the self voting habits of the people in the list? Nobody is complaining about people merely upvoting their own blogs where they put significant effort to provide value.
Why was self upvoting comments not included by default, ever? Look and see what's going on and maybe you'll feel differently.
It's not really about blogs and comments, it's just kind of presumed that people put more effort into top level posts, and if they're putting effort in, it's further presumed that they think it has value.
The issue is the exploitation of the reward pool. In that case a vote is not 'subjective proof of value', it is just a vote to pay yourself from the network's pocket.
No, I appreciate there's no real distinction between blogs and comments, in that both (or neither), can have value.
The trouble is, other votes fall into that category too, such as those from bots and trails. It's not 'subjective proof of value' if people are clicking because other people are (without viewing) is it?
It's not proof that the stakeholder views the specific post as valuable, but it could be indicative that someone finds it valuable. If a blogger has created 100 posts and every single one of them was good, or a voter has upvoted 100 posts and every one of them was good, it can be reasonably expected that their next vote/blog will be good as well. There are obvious flaws in this, but it can work to some degree. For some it is better to reinforce other subjective entities than to leave stake idle.
what I'm agruing against is why it's anyone's business except for the person doing the voting?
You want more rules and regulations?
this is how you get them.
The white paper deals extensively with the question of self voting.
why was upvote included as the default option (from day one) on the editor?
You'd have to ask the front end developers. Though you seem to be arguing with a straw man. Have you actually looked into the self voting habits of the people in the list? Nobody is complaining about people merely upvoting their own blogs where they put significant effort to provide value.
Why was self upvoting comments not included by default, ever? Look and see what's going on and maybe you'll feel differently.
True. I always upvote my blogs, and never my comments, as per the original defaults I guess.
You can see your vote distribution here, and self-votes percentage here:
http://www.steemreports.com/votes-info/
It's not really about blogs and comments, it's just kind of presumed that people put more effort into top level posts, and if they're putting effort in, it's further presumed that they think it has value.
The issue is the exploitation of the reward pool. In that case a vote is not 'subjective proof of value', it is just a vote to pay yourself from the network's pocket.
No, I appreciate there's no real distinction between blogs and comments, in that both (or neither), can have value.
The trouble is, other votes fall into that category too, such as those from bots and trails. It's not 'subjective proof of value' if people are clicking because other people are (without viewing) is it?
It's not proof that the stakeholder views the specific post as valuable, but it could be indicative that someone finds it valuable. If a blogger has created 100 posts and every single one of them was good, or a voter has upvoted 100 posts and every one of them was good, it can be reasonably expected that their next vote/blog will be good as well. There are obvious flaws in this, but it can work to some degree. For some it is better to reinforce other subjective entities than to leave stake idle.
what I'm agruing against is why it's anyone's business except for the person doing the voting?
You want more rules and regulations?
this is how you get them.
How the network budget is spent is everyone's business. We're all stakeholders here, it's our budget that's being spent.
You can vote how you like, we can vote against you and we can call you out on your votes.