I will add my thoughts to this interesting thread. I presume that every poster had individual "needs" and I will explain mine.
I am British born and lived in Kensal Rise, hence the Queen's Park area, and later Willesden. For reasons of "local club" as well the "quality of the football", from around 1970 on going to secondary school near Holland Park, I started to support QPR and got hooked. I left to go to Poland in 1991 for a "couple of years" and have not returned. No surprisingly, my following of the R's was then very limited and really restricted to teletext and the odd old newspaper. With the development of the internet and such forums, everything changed with my exiled QPR experience.
Around 2002, I discovered that there are QPR forums and after evaluating several, I was attracted by LFW and the high quality (but lengthy) journalism of Clive. It allowed me to get very detailed insights and to regain the missing "QPR experience". I religiously read all the previews, reviews and analyses. but originally I was not a poster. When I finally “declared my cheese" and started to post, I found it extremely cliquey and unfriendly, so I was a rare poster, except for the odd QPR footy matter.
After some time, a poster Roller encouraged me to take a look at The not606 QPR board. I admit that initially I was not impressed as there were no "journalistic articles" and "only threads". However on my first post, I was genuinely surprised at the very warm reception and I have found this forum to generally be non-cliquey, well balanced and rather similar to popping into a pub where with friends, acquaintances and others, you can discuss the last match, the next match and predict the team. So you can learn, chat and gossip about QPR, plus as always, you can touch other topics such as jokes, current affair, historical and non-historical pictures, plus the passing away of "celebrities", etc. As such, it is a large part of my personal QPR experience, as is the journalism on LFW, and most recently the QPR+ streams.
So for me, the core of this site is the QPR related banter and exchange of opinions. Other topics are interesting, but generally I do not have the time to read them in detail. If there is much activity at QPR, then I tend to be more involved, if it is the off-season, then less. Plus much depends on what is happening in the "real world". If you are ill, busy or travelling, you have less time and other priorities.
So my personal conclusion. It is the quality of the QPR related discussions which are the core to attract and keep members and posters. The uniqueness of this forum is the openness, self-moderation and respect of other posters, and we should respect this as a key "value". However, like in the "real world" or even pubs, people come and go. It is normal and part of "life".
I am also pleased that on my rare visits to LR I have had the opportunity to meet a few posters and the experience has been very postive.
