I think that @sneak's complaint is not about the service steemtrail is providing. This is helping to keep authors motivated amidst a time of mostly failing user-retention.

It appears to me, that what he is bringing attention to, is the fact that a simple comment is all that is needed to bring this to the author's attention. Instead, a curation trail follows after each comment and votes it to the top of the list.

I can agree that I don't really see the need for that. If the comment is to the top trending comment on the post, it will arrive their naturally through votes from users that view the post.

It seems to me that this is simply a waste of voting power and reward money.

I could be wrong though. Perhaps he simply does not care for steemtrail, nor what they are doing in the community.

Ironically however, a complaint about an irrelevant comment that takes a second to scroll passed, turned into a debate that takes 5 seconds to scroll past. lol.