Why YSK? Comments you reply positively to, should definitely get your upvote. Comments you disagree with should be at your discretion. Trolls deserve downvotes (seriously, they live for those). Disagreeing with someone in the midst of a good discussion doesn’t necessarily warrant one, and might deserve an upvote. Even if you don’t reply, but you agree with the comment, give it your vote.
Also, this has nothing to do with propping up folks’ egos. Comments with more upvotes will likely be seen first the longer the post is up. Alternatively, downvoted posts are less likely to be seen unless users are looking for them.
Of course, this can lead to folks accusing communities of having leftist/right-wing bias, but I think overall it improves the usage of the site. Personally, the thing I liked most about Reddit was the conversations in the comments. Usually the ones with the most upvotes were more worth the read & engagement.
I disagree. Voting is low-effort participation. Leaving a comment is much higher effort. I prefer the latter.
I agree that voting is low effort participation is it is participation. The software is kind of designed to work this way. More favored posts/discussions are promoted. If nobody “promotes” anything, the wheat stays mixed in with the chaff.
But it’s a “why not both” situation. If you don’t vote, the comment won’t get featured as highly. That might not matter much for a thread with 5 comments, but when there’s 200 comments, only some of them are gonna be seen and voting defines which (not replies – after all, plenty of bad comments get tons of replies).