Well, let me use this 10,842nd post to thank you, and respond to your thoughtful comment!
I think it's awesome that you're helping out newcomers; I try to spend at least one day a week looking at the #introduceyourself tag, just to get a sense of who's coming onboard-- and I have "met" some real gems in the process; and it's nice to help kick start a few with a re-steem or two.
Maybe the atmosphere on Steemit has changed a bit since I started; as I recall, one of the ways I got to a 50+ rep pretty fast was to comment extensively (and sometimes aggressively) on "high profile" posts. On the other hand, I know sometimes some of the high rep folks don't comment and vote back... I few I "know" fairly well, and I know they use auto votes to give small upvotes to hundreds of accounts so they are always pretty tapped out.
Currently, the average runs about 2.4 comments per post sitewide, so I guess with 60+ comments already, this one is ahead of the engagement curve.
I am working my way to 10,000 comments, congratulation on your level of engagement. I understand about the vote trails and such, so people on those or who rent out to curation trails, may not always have control over where their vote goes, so do not have much left for their own blogs, I am actually fine with that, I am a very very firm believer in your vote your choice. Hopefully people will see that yes comments do make a difference.
Well, I know comments make a difference to me, in the sense that I am far more likely to find a "new favorite person to follow" as a result of an active comment exchange than as a result of randomly browsing Steemit.