You should probably also make an artist tag for yourself, as well. I would make it for you, but I'm not sure if you want to go by your username or if you have any social media you want to link, or any alternate names.
Yes. Self-uploads are now treated like other regular posts. But that doesn't mean you can freely dump low-quality stuffs here, since they still need to go through the queue. And if you want to post AI arts, there is now AIBooru.