That's... kind of dumb? What's wrong with lurking if you don't have much to say on a topic, but want to observe?

Makes sense if the goal is to get content flowing. Doesn't make sense if you want the quality of content to be good.

How does that work?

If Alice posted once the last months, and Bob 20 times, and they both post another post, then ... maybe Mastodon will promote Bob's post and demote Alice's because Bob has been more active? (I would have preferred the opposite, hmm)

I don't think Mastodon has "promotion". If Alice posts once and Bob 20 times, you'll see Bob all over your feed and can easily miss Alice's post unless you seek it out. There is a retweet type feature (I forget the name) but I'm not sure it really does much to get Alice's message out to a wider audience.

Ok thanks :-)