Unfortunately, that does seem to be part of how "it" works, sometimes. If you look, you'll see this post has close to 70 comments... and yet, not a whole lot of the "spammy" stuff a lot of people complain about. I say that, and now I am suddenly afraid the next comment will come from an upvote beggar... ;-)
Your point is well taken, though... and I really don't have any good answers on that front.