RE: What comes first, the large votes or the engagement?

Thanks for compiling these stats @abh12345. Engagement is a complex topic, and it's a bit difficult to measure clearly with a smaller core userbase like we have on HIVE. I have a feeling that as active users increase, engagement becomes more exponential and viral in nature. That would happen with/without any direct incentives for commenting, as people just like to be where the buzz is.

One thing I've noticed is that the more concrete/ more approachable a post is, the higher the engagement tends to be. For example, when I post mostly poetry, it doesn't tend to get too much engagement, but when I write articles on concrete topics, a lot more people weigh in. Obviously, that's especially the case if the post directly poses a question to the audience or provides another clear incentive to engage, like a contest rewarding responses. Then also, people are more likely to comment on users with a higher reputation number and/or larger stake for obvious reasons.

There's been an idea bouncing around in my head recently that wouldn't be a silver bullet for the whole engagement beast but could be really cool... what about having an initiative that directly seeks out and rewards quality comments with a decently weighty curation trail?

P.S.

This post also motivated me to step my commenting game back up, again... I tend to go through phases where I find it hard to have the energy to respond after working on getting content ready, or just tired of staring at the screen all day working on other things, lol. It's something that's really important to me, though, I just neglect giving it my all, sometimes...