RE: Time To Bring Upvoting Comments Back (For Those Who Can)
It's a bit of a catch 22. You want to reward people for taking the time to comment and engage with you, but you don't want to "waste" your vote, and also don't want people to be commenting for the sake of commenting.
I think @bengy is correct in that rewarding comments can bring services like @dustsweeper and @dustbunny into the fore, but as well as that, we don't always have to think of upvoting purely in terms of Steem.
For example, @talesfrmthecrypt has been running a great little T20 cricket based competition based on Australia's Big Bash League matches. He upvotes entries with a small amount that is not only below the dust threshold, but also falls below the threshold at which @dustsweeper actually picks up and boosts the dust. So it's micro-particles if you will. Having said that, however, I am rewarded for these entries with some SPORTS tokens.
So upvoting, even a small amount, can still offer some reward.
The other side of the coin (or token), is that there are people who will engage because they value the engagement above any rewards, however a little acknowledgement in the form of a tiny vote tells them that their contribution is appreciated.
Just my thoughts.
Hey, @sparkesy43.
It's tough to give what you would like on a post or a comment, and it's tough to try to spread it around, so most of us have to be a little choosey with what we upvote and how much.
If anyone's ever commented for commenting sake on my posts it's been few and far between and long ago, since we're more or less in an engagement drought right now. :)
It's true, though, STEEM isn't the only thing going, and there is value in getting other tokens even if it's just to eventually convert them into STEEM. If staking occurs and some of those tokens eventually take off, all the better.
Two years ago when I joined, the going preference for voting, especially for newcomers, was to use 100% upvotes on posts, and forget the rest. I couldn't do it, but I see so many of these micro-particle upvotes you mentioned and I see a certain wisdom in the 100% upvoting. It seems, however, everyone, high or low SP has decided that its better to upvote as much as possible, even with nothing, rather than upvote only a few with maybe something.
So, there's plenty of micro-particle upvotes to go around. :)