How do you know if the comment adds value or not, I mean there are new people that like to be wellcome, or people that likes to read that their photo or post its good for someone... sometimes an upvote is not enough because sometimes its not even a cent... I think you should focus on bots and stop focusing on people that just want to embrace new stemmians to keep posting and make community, the real problem are the bots, those post the same thing over and over again and add no value to any post, there are so many cases when somebody new makes a post and does not receive any comment and then they just stop using the platform because they don't receive any feedback.
It's not an issue to occasionally make a friendly remark, I'm only replying to accounts making a significant number of these comments.
And I don't yet know if this is adding value, but I will validate that with any clear reduction in comments of this nature, or my true goal, to reduce comment volume universally so we are only recording those points that add specifically to the conversation.