"Whether I agree or disagree with a post I find myself asking the question “is this reply valuable enough to leave as a comment?”."

If only the 65% of the platform that are pure spammers applied this rule...

"It’s much better than me going on YouTube and being called a “nigg@r” by a 14 year old for no reason"

True, but I have always avoided all other social media for precisely these reasons. I am forced to admit that Steemit appears unlikely to change this tendency.

"but kudos to Steemit for incentivizing people to choose valuable cordial commentary."

It's definitely an improvement to anonymous Twitter trolls.