I've seen plenty of people say that they prefer acknowledgement, meaning interactions, over ghost upvotes that could just as well be delivered by a bot.

I would rather have more comments then higher payouts, I love talking and discussing topics with people! Especially when it comes to my ideas and ideals! I like seeing what other people thing! Connect with other people! Maybe learn something new...

Projects like @c-squared, @curie and fundamental in balancing this whole thing, and a conversation on how we can create curation more enticing to stake holders should never be off the table, because that has to be the way we drive this home.

At first I too thought "What if I suck?" I was afraid of posting, i triple checked everything I wrote, even comments, always afraid of everything, and even after posting I was worried... What got me over that fear was at first @curie! I got a huge upvote from them when I first started and I was astonished! Someone liked my content! After it I decided to go to SteemStem since i like science so much, the first post was not the best, but I talked to the mods over there and got my posts a lot better! So I started getting upvotes from SteemStem, the science community of Steem, a community where the curators were mainly people from science backgrounds, people with Phds... I felt like I got "a seal of approval"! After this, the fact that I developed so many "social connections" with other Steemians also got me over that fear! Connections that even after not posting for 6 months people still remembered me when i came back! that is what got me over the fear of "What if I suck?"... And if I do suck... who cares xD Let the haters do their thing, a man that has no enemies probably isn't successful!