Should self-upvoting be banned?

We all know that self-upvoting, especially on comments, is considered bad etiquette on Steemit, but should it be banned?

There is already a Smackdown Kitty bot which targets SteemIt users who have more than 1000 SP and who also upvote their own comments. It doesn't seem to be targeting many users at present and, in any case, most self-upvoters (and there are many of them) I see have less than 1000 SP.

There has also been discussion about limiting/ending the possibility of self-upvoting articles themselves. The majority of content writers currently upvote their own articles, with it becoming the default action in the SteemIt web interface.

A few things to consider in the arguments for and against allowing self-upvoting are:

• Most users join the platform to 'earn' money. Self-upvoting is the easiest way to do this.
• Most of these users only invest in Steem because self-upvoting gives them a guaranteed return.
• Many people who do not self-upvote form 'rings' whereby they all automatically vote for each other.
• Some people will pair together to upvote every reply between themselves in any comment thread.
• Many people do not vote according to the quality of content, rather they vote and comment on any trash they think will give them profit.
• There is a serious lack of quality content for people to vote and comment on.

So, what's the solution? Should self-upvoting be banned?

Some ideas I have seen discussed are...

• A ban on self-upvoting comments, but leaving authors free to upvote their own articles
• A total ban on self-upvoting, both articles and comments
• A limit on the number of self-upvotes. This would solve the problem of what is, and what is not, acceptable whilst partly addressing some of the points made in the previous list.

This issue will have to be addressed at some point. The question is how will the outcome be decided, and who will make the decision?

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