Obviously it's necessary to pick your battles, but you shouldn't pour the baby out with the bathwater. I'll spare you additional platitudes, but for me writing comments is more than just fishing for replies. It's an extension of my creative self-expression and overall good exercise. Not only in terms of the technical aspects of writing, but in terms of the way I think.

Could be dropping pebbles into a bottemless pit and listening for a bang, unsure, but I figure you shouldn't preoccupy yourself with high expectations. Don't get me wrong, recognition is nice (and I'm grateful for it), nevertheless I'm trying to be stoic about it. Anything but that is driving me insane and so I just stay true to myself, rather than trying to please everybody. I'm not indifferent, just... time managing the battles in my own head. I guess.

Wasting time is a legitimate concern, but then I'd say mini-maxing your output has its own issues. Like posting a million cat images (I like them actually), about as much as dropping unsolicited essays everywhere. The latter being my personal malfunction :-).