as you said yourself: "people participate in forums for various reasons" did you try to observe the reasons why several people are on this forum? look at altcoins section and Gambling section. we have to stop pretending that most people come here for information when this is not true. Most people come here to take care of their business (money).
Did you try to read my post carefully? I never said that majority of people are here because they are genuinely interested in information. Pay attention to bold part from my post. I just wanted to point out that is wrong to generalize and to say that everyone here is strictly because of the money. Majority? Probably. Everyone? Of course not.
While majority of people is here because of the money making opportunities, there are some for which this is just an extra bonus, and for some of them money earning aspect of bitcointalk forum is completely irrelevant and they would be active nevertheless so I don't think it's good to generalize.