A decentralized community should emphatically embrace transparency (imho).

Encourage individuals whenever they shed light on what other individuals are doing, but ultimately let each individual in the community decide how to handle that info.

Personally, I would like to see a metric developed and assigned to every post that would measure the level of self-voting or circle-voting associated with the posting account. Maybe after the semester is over I can devote some time to try to develop just such a measure -- and maybe some work on that has already been done.

Whenever I see a self-vote I tend to skip upvoting that content. However, sometimes I miss it. I appreciate having folks like @calumam calling it out so that I am more mindful to watch for it.

The 'rules' of the blockchain allow self-voting. The 'rules' of the community frown upon it. Ultimately, though, it's an individual-level decision (both with respect to whether to do it and how to respond to others who do it).

I also agree with @calumam's decision not to get into downvoting wars. I see zero benefit from that unless its done collectively (by the community) to put a stop to behavior the community as a whole finds objectionable.

My 0.02976 HIVE.