Yeah, I mentioned it in the anime thread that I had been reading the forum for months but didn't really have a whole lot of interest in joining to start with. Just different things like...maybe a new game is announced and then you get a bunch of people responding "It looks good" or "that doesn't look very good." When you get a few pages, or even just one really, most people reading get the idea and I didn't really feel compelled to input whether I personally was looking or was not looking forward to a game.
That's just one example. Other things like many people want to be the one to share some game news or to put up an OT or something so I don't really have to create any threads. Just different things like that. Eventually for different reasons though I did want to become a member to talk about some things now and so I joined.