"16k edits buts 44k comments – that doesn’t give me much reason to give a damn what you have to say."

if you are referring to https://www.openstreetmap.org/user/CurlingMan13 - then you seem to misunderstand counter of changed notes, see https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Notes

It is not a changeset comment counter.

Also, even if someone would make high number of changeset comments... This is often associated with comments on reverted changesets, reverting major vandalism wave can easily result in thousands of changeset comments and just few edits.