I'm about to hit 50 posts, and I'm getting excited as I get close to receiving as many votes as I've put out (I've put out 1100 or so). It feels like giving back--to finally get the votes I've given away. So I started looking at other posters with similar ranking, and some of them have almost no votes. That is, they just post; they don't vote on others' posts.

I guess that's a contribution, because they clearly are posting things people like. But it seems odd to me. That is, it seems to me that full participation in the community means voting as well as posting. I guess that implies I assume that the goal is full participation in the community: it is for me. But am I really doing that?

Thinking further, I guess one could be a valuable member of the sifting community either by just voting or just posting videos. And then of course there is posting to sift talk, running a channel, having playlists, blogging, and helping with site mechanics: only some of which I've tried to do yet.

I guess this brings home to me that I still have a ways to go for "full participation in the community."