You have hit the nail on the head... Bringing in engagement before up-voting will only help promote cheating to the system because I think so many users will try by all means to bring ghost accounts to comment on their articles

Besides that, So many quality articles will always expire without support since it might lack comments under. And when this is done, it will discourage alot of users and demotivate them..

Again, what of people posting on their blogs? I have come across such articles and they are always of good quality.. So that means if the person don't receive a comment, his/her post will be ignored simply because of that which is very bad

In all, I think checking a post for steemexclusive, club status, bot free and plagiarism free are enough rules for an article to receive support

Cc @huzaifanaveed1