Thanks Jerry. This was a particularly informative post.

"What the rewards are telling me is that I'm not doing that great of a job upvoting."

I think it's key to remember that this is only true if your only measure of upvoting success is curation rewards. I spend most of my votes on the commenters in my article, and on anyone who engages in discussion or debate with me in the comments, regardless of viewpoint (unless someone is uncivil).

When you vote on the comments of others, you are basically forgoing curation rewards because I've observed that most users will not put significant value upvotes on most comments. This is a sacrifice I'm willing to make to encourage people to discuss articles with me on my blog, and that was probably true of you at one point as well.

Incidentally, you may have enough comments to respond to that encouraging more could actually become counterproductive. Don't wear yourself out.