I think each of us needs to build his/her own audience. And then comments will be there. I have a good number of comments to each of my post, with real questions. And the number is manageable. Not huge, but pleasant enough so that I can answer everyone personally.
What we want in the future is the community to act as a community so that any stem poster could get a bunch of reasonable comments to his/her posts. Let's see.
In time steemstem community is going to grow. I think the internal mechanics will improve, and real STEM posters have a place they can turn to for help, and get their work seen and viewed. A few of those complaining about lack of comments or votes need to view post from other STEM posters, see what they are doing and try to emulate them.
You, Suesa, and Greenrun, all do very good at the interaction with your audience. If an individual does not want to accept input, then they are not going to accept it. When first reading the post here and those first several entries; The post seemed to be about taking a break and reevaluating and defending itself, and about quality of work and then why they are not able to engage everyone. That last part I fully understand, and commenting guiding and helping can at times be a thankless job, and at other times a wonderful one.
People understand when they need a break, but not when someone else needs one. Steemstem community will grow, and people will learn to engage. The core working group, of STEM are the ones that will have fingers pointed at them, as in any group, it is always the leaders fault and never the Plebs fault for their own failure.
One of these days soon, I am going to need to take my break, and go and read Suesa's latest funny take, Greenruns thoughtful story, and see a couple of your post, and learn a bit about you since I see you always trying to help and like you said answering your commenters reasonably. Thank you for the response.
I am fully agreeing with the points in there. Funnily enough, several of the solutions proposed by the users to the current problems were: it is up to the team to work more... People are rarely thinking about what they can do, but often what others can do... :D