I have to say, I do appreciate the upvotes when I comment. However, I comment because I feel I have something to contribute. A lot of your posts make it easy to do that, like this one. Everyone has an opinion about what to upvote and how much.
On top of that, I could have written this post. It's not every day when I find myself lining up completely with someone else's ideas about anything, let alone upvoting comments.
From day one, I've felt that if anyone engaged with me on my post or someone else's, it was worth some kind of upvote. The better the comment, the better the upvote, within the abilities of my SP. So, I couldn't agree with you more on that point.
I have only flagged once, and that was on a phishing scam. The bulk of my time, I feel, is best spent upvoting what I feel to be good content. I understand we need curators, and so, I'm doing what I can to curate posts and comments.
This place does need more engagement, so if I get it, I'm going to upvote it, as long as it's a genuine attempt at engagement, even if I don't agree with what's said. I've had great conversations that way and I'm happy to say, that as far as I'm concerned, they ended amicably and I can still engage with said commenters to this day.