Actively curating our own comment sections. Take the damn time! Show-- by example-- how a good and engaging comment is rewarded and results in actual dialogue... give a small upvote to someone who's obviously trying but not good at English. Give a tiny upvote to someone who at least show they READ the post. FLAG the stuff you can readily identify as spam... it orders the comments meaningfully.

And curate good comments elsewhere! If someone wrote a stellar comment on someone else's post, give 'em a nudge; dropping a few 10-20% upvotes on comments isn't going to kill your voting power.