Hi, @mike314-0005! Thanks for leaving such a good comment, this is exactly the type of comment I think adds lot of value to the post.

It's very interesting that you just read about someone who did the exact opposite! You already know what I think about rewarding comments, so I won't repeat myself, but I'm also a big fan of the fact that everyone chooses how to spend their own voting power. Some only upvotes themselves, other upvote comments, some only posts, and some people even only spend it on downvotes. I'm glad there are different people here, and in the end I think we get a good mix of all of these types of voters.

Personally I think a useful comment can be worth more than the post itself, and by rewarding the people that comment on your post, you're actually saying 'thanks for reading'.

I completely agree. There are many posts on Steemit that are decent at best, but get's bumped into my subjective good post category because some comments added a lot of content and maybe even explained in greater details.

I also try to reply to every (genuine) comment I get.

That's good! There's no point in having a social media if people aren't planning on interacting and replying to comments in my opinion, so it's good to see that there are more people here who tried their best to reply to all comments. I do of course also understand that the whales who get 500+ comments on their post cannot reply to all of them with the same effort as us smaller accounts can, but I agree that interaction is a key aspect here that is often forgotten or devalued.

It's interesting that you mention how commenting is the only way for new members to get noticed, which I have almost completely forgotten since I've been here for such a long time now. But it makes sense, and I think networking and building up a reputation is extremely valuable if you want to earn money here. It's just like all other social medias; you need to build up a following if you want to make any money.

Best regards from @valth