I have read your posts about why you generally don't up-vote your comments. It has made me think but I have still stuck to upvoting my own comments whenever I don't feel bad about it.
Sometimes I upvote my comments to increase the visibility and at other times I upvote my comments as I would have spent time writing it. I generally don't upvote my comments if they are short ones like "Thank you" or "Good post". But whenever I feel that I have added some value I make it a point to upvote my comments. Whenever I am in doubt I upvote my own comment and make it a point to upvote a few other comments which have added value to the post.
In my opinion what differentiated steemit from other blogging platforms is the kind of interactions that happen in the comments section. One of the driving factors could be the rewards for comments and if upvoting their own comments is a motivation for people to engage with others I don't see a problem with it.
Would like to know your thoughts on the same @lukestokes
I'm all about upvoting other comments to encourage the interaction you're talking about. When you upvote your own comments, it can be seen (by some) as increasing the noise and decreasing the signal. Obviously the author (in this case) thinks the comment is valuable or they wouldn't bother writing it. What matters is what the network thinks. That's a true signal. Sometimes I don't upvote a comment if I see they've already given themselves a self-vote.
I'm a little disappointed they removed the option to decline payouts on comments so you could still get the visibility, but it was apparently a bit to complicated for most users.
Ultimately, people can do whatever they want, and they will have the reputation their actions give them.