Yes, I remember that type of engagement level from my heydays and making it to the top. Those days are long gone and now I just check the bottom of the list to see if I made it on or not. ;)
Lol on the newbiepalooza. Yes, that one was to get more user engagement but it was also a contest. People commenting there do so for a chance to win prizes. It is different than daily conversing, imo. I did a lot of that myself in the early days, but I've become friends with many of them and those type of conversations are now on discord. Can't say that is good or bad, but we are definitely not using RCs!
There is also the UA score that seems to factor in the comments on our posts. People may be much more conservative with those going forward.
Guess it will be grab a rope and hang on see where we end up.
Maybe it won't be much worse than bandwidth, which surprisingly was never much of a problem for me. Although I would often hear others speak of it.
I know you are right though Discord would save a lot on the blockchain resource end.
UA score is not used on any site front end, has quite a few flaws in it's basic concept and logic and is hardly anything to bother paying attention to.
Who has more UA, me, with my 64 rep and 66 witness? Or bernie when he had a -19 rep and no witness. Duh, of COURSE, berniesanders had more influence but id have the higher ua score.
UA is an impossible thing to metric, don't let anybody try to kid you and try to sell you on giving them a delegation for it, for sure.