With HF21, a lot of things are changing. One of the things that is changing most is the reward on comment up votes.
On STEEM we have a dust level treshold of $0.02 after curation. With the reward curve changes combined with the changes in the split of inflationary sources, the number of accounts capable of casting a single up vote above this level will (these numbers are a bit old, so I may be off a bit) decrease with about 85%. For the 15% that is left, giving that just-above-dust-level single up vote is likely to end up a rather economically expensive action, as the same post used for up voting a post rather than a comment is likely to yield up to twice as much economic value. The result:
Post HF21: You are very unlikely to get any upvotes on a comment.
I personally don't comment all that much. I do however value social interaction on my post. I would very much like to continue up voting people who comment on my work.
I believe there is a simple yet effective workaround for the post HF21 reality that should allow us to keep rewarding commenters on our posts:
A weekly comment-vote accumulator post.
Just create a simple post once a week, looking something like this. Then, during the week, when you comment on a post, you add a little footer to your post looking something like this:
<hr>
<center>
<sup>If you wish to upvote this comment, please click the button below and up vote my accumulator post</sup>
<A HREF="https://steemit.com/LINKTOWEEKLYACCUMULATOR">
<IMG SRC="https://cdn.steemitimages.com/DQmdmnnhBiLaPfMVAfAGuRPuz16yrf1h6oCbAdN334x71HK/image.png">
</A>
</center>
This should end up looking like the comment I'll post as an example below my own post.
I think using comment up vote accumulation posts makes a lot of sense post-HF21. I really hope we can use them on this platform to keep social interaction alive.
Personally, even though I won't reach threshold level with my 4KSP upvotes unless STEEM goes back up again (something unlikely to happen any time soon), I will steel keep throwing away my votes to up voting comments to show I appreciate the feedback, and as I will be mostly posting in #creativecoin and thus I think my upvotes on comments should yield some CCC value, I hope people commenting on my STEEM-only posts, and those not in to scot tokens, will be using comment-vote accumulator posts for me (and others) to upvote.