Ok, so I found this much more helpful than any other FAQ.
My 3 key takeaways being a minnow:
- don't bother upvoting old/trending topics; find your hidden gems
- reputation is everything: make sure to introduce yourself and keep a consistent profile of giving back
- definitely, NO signatures!
People now get away with a lot of spam comments due to some changes that made them harder to prevent. Signatures aren't hated on like they used to be for that reason. But the first 2 remain true. Although my most recent post is about making it more profitable to find these hidden gems of newer authors such as yourself to try to discourage all the autovoting.