The social forums as I have experienced are for people who are nominally interested in promoting some common goal, a creative cause, a sensible purpose. Nevertheless in practice they all want to learn (sneakily) something from the others so that they can use that piece of knowledge in building their own product of applied knowledge to be sold in a shared market where they otherwise compete.

Is it because we are living in a remix culture?

http://h2obeta.law.harvard.edu/80835