Oh I see. Today's reality is not described in any official document except the code (not easy to read) but we can all observe by experimentation, though it's not ideal.
Markets are good at optimising around incentives and we can observe from the increase in self voting that it is more incentivized after HF 19, as can anyone who has experimented from this.
No problem, thanks for asking. 🙂
I think you neglect the reduction in votes as an incentive to self vote. HF 19 reduced the number of votes that can be cast by minnows by 400%. During the time HF19 was being discussed and developed, the number of posts rose by 1000%.
The number of votes available to be cast has been reduced dramatically, and those new to the platform are starved for votes.
I don't think the exponential weighting extant prior to HF19 reduced reward pool mining at all. Virtually all author rewards went to a handful of accounts, and as far as I know that hasn't changed at all since HF19.