I am not sure what you mean by "communities and getting higher upvotes". There was a time this was the payment for the contests and the payment for being a moderator, which takes a lot of time, that is if you read every post, check it for plagiarism, AI use, have to check all posts in the account of the author, scroll back to his very first post, check his comments so compare writing style and and and ...

If it comes to the member: they are also part of the community. Without members there is no community.

The question is why a vote is given.
For good content? For being loyal? For delegating all SP? For being a moderator? To be able to pay prizes for contests? (Do they still exist or are most gone since many hosts only had (several) because they had never to pay it from their own wallet?)

I just checked several newcomers being supported, I delegated SP to during a project to help newcomers, the SC curator team voted for and even gave booming votes to trash content to help those newcomers grow. I can tell you it does not motivate them to come back, not even to improve or say "thank you". Most of them already know the tricks since they are introduced by the same person. No upvote is big enough to make lazy one, the one who doesn't like to write or a scammer improve. Let alone being loyal. They go where they believe the money flows. Giving up items back is also not in it.

I still agree with the one who said that those being thrown into the deep and had to figure it out on their own are the better ones, more committed and more willing to comment, upvote and reply.

Look at yourself. You not even read and reply what I wrote to you as SC09...