Heh thanks. I've been thinking of posting my findings so far as we've tried the community transfer through several platforms now, although it's been a few years since the last attempt. I'll gather my thoughts on it and make the post later if you want to watch my feed.

So far my take on the high quality comments is the Steemit community, through the various levels of quality and engagement desire of posters, inadvertently discourages discussion in comments. Prior to registering I spoke to a buddy who's been here much longer than I. I asked him about discussion in comments as a potential replacement to the old message board system (since our site orbits around message board front/databases). His response was that due to the number of spam/shit comments and lack of reciprocal engagement by some OPs to insightful/long comments, commenting isn't what it can potentially be. The latter I'd see as particularly problematic as it discourages commenting and thereby discourages the insertion of links as references and so forth. If I wrote you my War and Peace essay and you replied "thanks for your comment" I wouldn't bother commenting again.

There's also a question of etiquette which you may set me straight on. If I reply to your comment but a link to my own post is included, I assume I may get flagged by someone who is not necessarily yourself who disagrees with comment linking. I've noticed that Steemit etiquette is a highly subjective matter. While linking my own post in a comment is internal linking, the prevalence of this practice in facilitation of an indepth discussion would also naturally lead to a prevalence in linking outside sources, thus improving the SEO value.