Since they gave the option to stop being paid for comments, I've been contemplating doing it as an experiment to see if I might actually get more engagement. Right now, it's kind of a courtesy to do that, and I wonder how many people are avoiding it because they don't have enough SP to spread their votes around.

As it is, the value of comments aren't in the rewards you can get. It's in the engagement and the opportunities talking to others can provide. If gentlebot shows up randomly and drops some rewards, cool, then the comment becomes something. Otherwise, we're always fighting the dust threshold, and even more so than posts, not all comments are worth the same.