The value of meaningful comments

The Hive blockchain is a great platform where you can share your thoughts, hobbies, and passions via blogs. And you even can get rewarded for creating the content you make. Everyone with stakes Hive tokens can reward your blog by upvoting. When you write a great blog you increase the chance of getting some nice rewards for it.
There are also multiple curation initiatives that have active curators that scroll through all the daily blogs to reward the ones they think to deserve it.

And while getting rewarded is nice, it's also important to get some interaction on your posts from the community. I remember when I started out here on Hive many years ago that I was really enthusiastic when I received upvotes on my blogs from curation initiatives that resulted in nice rewards. I was disappointed that often no one really commented on my blogs in a meaningful way.
I think that social interaction on content that is being posted is very important because it encourages engagement and creates a sense of community.

I think a detailed and meaningful response can be very valuable, both for the author of the blog as for the community as a whole. We are a social media platform And how social is it when we're only sending information and not receiving any?

By rewarding valuable comments we stimulate interaction and engagement on the Hive blockchain.
After all, we're not all great blog creators! We need people that read our blogs and interact with them too!

Why don't we reward comments?

It's not true that comments never get rewarded. I do see comments being rewarded, but a lot of times it is done by accounts that hold larger stakes. Even smaller upvotes of hivers with large stakes will be enough to generate curation rewards that raise above the 'dust' threshold of $ 0,02
I think that is also one of the reasons why you see more engagement on blogs from these hivers (apart from them having a larger group of followers of course).
For hivers that don't have a large stake, upvoting comments on their blogs isn't rewarding because their rewards often stay below the $ 0,02 dust threshold.

There are already some good initiatives that do reward comments like the @commentrewarder initiative by @acidyo and @hivetrending (Check it out here). And the @ocd curation service also rewards some valuable comments they come across.

But I think we can still improve rewarding, so I've been working on a new initiative:

What is Topcomment?

I've started the @topcomment initiative with the idea to create a curation account that will reward comments. The stake of the @topcomment account will only be used to upvote valuable comments to reward and stimulate interaction on the Hive blockchain.
This way we can reward people that take their time and actually read blogs and create valuable comments.
@topcomment can be used by hivers with a smaller stake to reward comments on their blogs so they can show appreciation for the time the commenter has taken to read their blogs and interact with the author.

How does it work?

It's actually quite simple. If you see a valuable comment from another Hive user, you just have to reply with that comment and mention @topcomment in your reply.
It doesn't necessarily have to be a comment on your own blog. It can also be just comment you've come across under another blog.
Not all comments that are being nominated will receive an upvote.
I will personally check every mention on a daily basis and give an upvote when I agree that it is a topcomment (and there is enough voting power).

Be sure to only nominate comments where the author has put some effort into. A comment that says: "Great blog!" isn't a really valuable comment that will be eligible for an upvote from @topcomment.

Support: Delegations & Trail

I've delegated the first 2000 Hive to the @topcomment account, so I can start upvoting posts, but it would be nice if the topcomment account would have some more Hive power. The more power it has, the more topcomments we can upvote and the more people we can support.

You can support this initiative in multiple ways;

Delegation

if you like this initiative you can support @topcomment and thereby the people that engage on Hive by delegating some Hive.
To make it easier I've created a couple of links that will redirect to the Hivesigner page to set a delegation.

50 HP
100 HP
250 HP
500 HP
1000 HP
1500 HP
2000 HP

Trail

The second way to support is by following the trail of the @topcomment account.
https://hive.vote/dash.php?trail=topcomment&i=1

Start using @topcomment

I hope @topcomment will help bringing engagement on Hive to a higher level by rewarding those who spend their time reading our blogs and writing meaningful comments.

Now start using @topcomment by mentioning @topcomment in replies to valuable comment.

If you have any comments or questions; feel free to comment on this post.

Reblogging this post is appreciated!

Kind regards,
@friendlymoose