Finally! I was actually waiting for something like this to pop up. People just don't want to take the time and share their views on others' posts. They just upvote and leave most of the time.
I try to upvote and engage with every person that puts a meaningful comment on my posts and I've had some great intellectual and emotional conversations with some people who actually read the damn article and try to understand it.
It's honestly a little sad that you have to put up a prize or reward for people to start commenting more often. It's something that should naturally happen because, well, this is a social platform. You can't grow without active and meaningful interaction with others. But some people just don't care, I guess.
Hey, @ayushjalan.
I hear you.
Going into this I was thinking it was because people didn't read or have the time to leave a comment, but based on at least what some folks are saying, it's more like they don't know what to say or don't feel like they are all that good at commenting. So, totally not what I was expecting at all. :)
There's been a mindset on STEEM that existed before I got there that comments don't have a lot of value, and it's rooted in the fact that you do have folks who spam, or don't really say much when they do comment. So, that's not helped, I'm sure, when folks have an opportunity to comment. They apparently get intimidated.
In my case, I'm not asking for razor sharp analysis. When I ask for more than a line or two that's pertinent to what I wrote, I don't think I'm asking for much. It might be a comment asking for clarification of what I just said. As long as it's genuine, that's all that matters. It's when people read a title without reading the rest, or maybe a paragraph, and then base it on that, or don't read at all—it's just easy to tell that they didn't really read.
re: reward
Well, I'm not doing anything I don't already do here. I guess I just felt like maybe telling people that's what I do would help. The problem is, there are those who don't expect anything for their comment—they're just doing it because they want to—and I certainly don't want to turn those folks off (I usually upvote them, anyway). As long as I have the voting power, I upvote, and if I don't, well, I'm forced to be somewhat picky. :)
Exactly. It's about quality of your comment, not about how many you can write to random people so they visit your blog once. I can't even begin to tell you how good it feels when someone actually writes a genuine comment on your post, especially when it's something personal and you want people to care.
I've had a lot of those too, lol. Their comments, like you mentioned, are pretty much "Good article", "Thank you for sharing", "Really helpful post" and all that crap. Either that, or they just repeat back what you have already written in your post.
Buy hey, as long as there are a fair number of genuine commenters, I won't complain.