That is definitely a factor. A lot of sites that are set up for people to get information rather than establishing a community are like that, because people have a question they want answered, find the board, post their question, get an answer, and never come back. It's not necessarily good or bad, but if you are looking for support rather than an answer to a single question, then it's not going to serve the need.

I also remembered another phenomenon, although really something for more technical oriented boards, but maybe any board mainly based on "Question and Answer" more than community. Also was more relevant when internet connections were slower. A lot of times someone would post a question and return for an answer. Since the internet was more difficult/slower to access, you would usually just check to see if you had a reply before opening the thread. When you had a reply, you would enter to read it. Many times the "reply" was from some regular there saying "I'm sorry you are having that problem but unfortunately I don't have an answer." So in other words you logged on for nothing. To make it worse, other regulars there with limited time would see that your post had a reply, think it was answered, and skip it completely in favor of standing posts with zero replies hoping to offer their help elsewhere.

For this reason it was definitely frowned upon to reply to a post unless you had an answer to the question. Obviously a different sort of behavior is called for here because while sometimes we are looking for answers, most of the time we just want the support and welcome any and as many replies as we can get. Some people may naturally operate in that "no answer, no post" frame of mind, and I have to say that I was kind of "trained" that way and I try not to do that here only by conscious thought.

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