I understand and agree with everything you say - there's certainly a balance to be had between keeping valuable contributors and promoting valuable engagement. (I also think that you could go for a day, week, month or more without commenting and your contribution and desire for Steemit to succeed would not be questioned (in a good way 🙂))

My fear as things currently stand though is that...

If Steemit is an art gallery and community moderators are volunteers working at the gallery...

We have a lot of artists coming in, hanging up their work and then leaving without so much as looking at (or noticing) the other art in the gallery...

Volunteers leave a note to compliment the artist (which may or may not be acknowledged). There might be an occasional visitor who comes in to look at and discuss the art but they don't stay for long because there's nobody to discuss it with. They might return at a later date and hang their own art up alongside everybody else's.

I appreciate this isn't an ideal analogy and paints a pretty bleak picture (pun intended).

As somebody who values the engagement, when I take the time to comment on somebody's post, and even go to effort of promoting one of their posts within one of my own and receive nothing in response (and I see that they've had the time to write 3 more long posts in the mean time), a lack of time certainly isn't a reason I accept. But I digress...

There's room for every type of user who comes to Steemit - my belief is that it's those who take the time to look at other artists work and then take the time to stay and discuss it that should be served the champagne and canopes.