Don't be a vote connoisseur here please. Redefine how you think about voting and participating.
Do you miss your communities from elsewhere. Well guess what, you are that core community now. If you want it back, the only thing holding you back is you. Don't wait on someone else to start posting. You don't need to worry about the perfect polished quality of your content or if it has been done before elsewhere. The current bar is, umm, poorly defined. No one is judging you. Call it practice. EVERY time you see something interesting, get in the habit of posting it please. Maybe go out of your way to grab a reference or two and post them.
Along these lines, think of how unsure and uncomfortable this may seem to most of us former lurker connoisseurs. You can play hard and thick skinned all you want, but you know exactly what post or comment you posted elsewhere that got the most votes or interaction. Why? Because it matters to you. So upvote everything you can. It matters to someone else too. Don't upvote just for the value or interest you have in the content. Do it just to say "hey, thanks for making the effort to participate and make this place a few lines longer." Please rethink how you handle voting, at least for now, think of a down vote as FU for participating, no votes as I wish you weren't here. We are all likely accustomed to a lot more interaction and validation in our own little niches. This is really an underpinning value of social media, we are here to engage with people, so tell people who are new and unsure about a new and different place, "hey, thanks for participating." You may not know or really appreciate their interests, but you can help us grow a core that can evolve into your favorite niches as the community grows. You are the core community. We can all make it grow if we make it a place people want to be.
Agreed, being positive shouldn't be a rare thing for sure. However what people view as being positively impactful is different.
To me it is not helpful or desired to essentially lie to people by patting them all on the head with an upvote which is the equivalent of saying 'good post' even if the post added no value or worse sucked. While upvotes may provide a burst of dopamine to each user, it won't do them any favours in the long run. And once they realise everyone is getting upvoted regardless of content, the upvotes will come to be viewed as meaningless anyway.
Furthermore, upvoting is the lowest effort and lowest impact option -- If one wants to be more positively impactful and take more effort than just blindly upvoting every post, they could reply or PM to welcome new members to the community, direct them to helpful FAQs/resources, etc.
Furthermore there will be many communities which will all have their own values and expectations so if I'm in a community where mods put a rule to upvote every post, then sure if I want to participate in that community then I will do that. And if on the other end of the spectrum, if I'm in a community where mods have a rule for no low effort/value posts, if I want to stay in that community I will certainly only upvote posts that meet that rule. And of course those are both extreme cases and most communities will fall somewhere in the middle.
Anyway regardless of everything I've said, in the end how we add value to this platform is based on our unique values and preferences. It sounds like you are more connection-focused and I am more education/knowledge-focused. There is nothing wrong with either as there is nothing wrong with you upvoting all posts and inspiring others to join you. While I may have a different philosophy, I am also a huge fan of the need and benefit of diversity of thought and so I am quite glad you are a part of the community and that you want to make Lemmy a welcoming place -- your kindness and care will help make the community better.