#1 seems like a perfectly reasonable timeframe. I always thought 30 minutes was a little arbitrary and long so shortening that seems fine to me.
#2 seems odd to me. I've always said that I think self-voting is fine. If you're posting something that you believe has value, then you should be rewarded for creating that value. If you don't believe what you're posting has value, then you probably shouldn't even be posting in the first place. Attacking self-voting seems like curing a symptom as opposed to the root cause.
I'm not sure if an author is the best judge of whether their post adds value to the platform or not since I would suggest there is a certain amount of bias involved to some degree. Perhaps we should all just post whatever we like and manual curation can decide which posts add value and which don't.
If it doesn't add value, then why post?
Who decides if the post is valuable or not? Surely that is the job of those who view it as opposed to they who create it. I hardly look at the trending page any more because very, very few of the posts there add value for ME. It is totally subjective. I don't have an issue with anyone self voting their own created content even though I don't do it myself but I don't think we as individuals are in the best position to judge whether our posts add value to anyone elses life. I think we should leave that judgement up to them.
Agreed self-voting is opportunism...