Even if the author doesn't engage in the comments the commentators can still engage with each other.
In my opinion Steemit doesn't give much incentive to respond to comments.
Steemit should give all the power back to the bloggers. The authors of posts should be able to fully moderate their own blogs. You should get to choose the order of every thread if you want to. A 1% flag from the OP should auto-hide any comment. This way bloggers can increase the value of the blog by showing readers the best comments first.
Obviously this would just be an option anyone can opt in to (for censorship concerns). You could view the blog regularly or how the author wants you to view it. At this point you could also make an option for anyone to be able to moderate comments on any blog. Users would opt in to the best moderators. This would be an interesting proof-of-brain concept and a form of curation.
So what if there is no incentive to respond to comments? Why the hell does everything have to be about incentives to make money, and if there isn't one somewhere, then it's not worth doing... Jeez, but yes, many people operate this way, and it sucks. That's why manual curation isn't too popular because hey, just auto-vote and save yourself the trouble :P
That's an interesting idea. Someone would have to code it because I doubt Steemit inc has any interest :P
This trustless smart contract revolution isn't about trusting people to do the right thing. It's about forcing them to do the right thing. When you join a smart contract community, you agree to the rules and the rules are hard enforced. If we want people to do things we should at least be giving a small push in the right direction.
Wouldn't it be nice if everything just worked perfectly even though the space is massively underdeveloped. Yeah! It would... but... at the same time, would that really make sense? It's more satisfying to struggle and accomplish something than it is to be handed it on a silver platter.
Although you have made a good comment here how can you say it is the best comment made under this post so far? You have said it is upto the author to decide the order of comments in his/her post. But what about this self upvoting and pushing your comment to the top? (I even saw you downvoting a fellow commenter just for expressing his views.) Do you walk the talk?
I never said it was the best comment. In fact, under my system, people would no longer be able to boost themselves by self voting. I also said it's not up to the author it's up to anyone who wants to moderate.
There are no rules for flagging. It's the Wild West up in here. I gave that guy a full upvote because he cried so hard.