HF20 has changes related to the initial window where curation rewards currently go to the author. You can read more about that from Steemit's own publications, but HF20 isn't live yet.
As for what people do with their own stake, remember, investors want a return and it's ultimately their vested stake to do with as they wish. Almost all of my voting power goes towards voting other posts (I don't even vote up my own root posts as most everyone else does). It "costs" something in terms of voting power. Since I flagged some abuse recently my voting power was down to 50%. With steemvoter down, it's starting to come back up now.
Voting for those who are starting out sounds easy, but takes a lot of time. That's time I don't always have. There are many responsibilities for me to manage, but my witness account delegates to a number of services that are helping curate content. You can see my recent post about that.
Thanks for your reply @lukestokes.
Thank you for all that you do. It does take forever to get through everything and yes, we're definitely here to get a return on our investments. I apologize if you felt I was attacking you. I meant that as far as I understand any votes for oneself are void, so it wouldn't make a difference either way. They were also talking about penalizing you if you vote for the same person too many times, which makes no sense to me.
Thank you for the links, I will go have a look. Hope you have a good day further.