"Message board, personal demon". Interesting Eliot. Don't think I have ever heard it expressed that way.
There really is no reason for any advantage player to participate on message boards anymore. There was a time 10 years ago, when sharing experiences and learning from other players experiences made it worthwhile. But those days are long gone. Now everything is a pissing contest and message boards are filled with as many anti-AP haters and trolls as AP's.
So that said, why do some AP's still participate? Well why does anyone? Probably some sort of deficiency. Demons is a good way of putting it.
I guess I was just lucky enough to have come along at the right time. A time when message boards were productive and players, especially newer players could still learn a lot from others players and the experiences of other players. Like I said, everything I do is recycled, learned from other players. And most learned from players on message boards rather than books. So not that far removed from having benefited from message boards, I have a real problem with the disinformation and false claims, claims that defy math, that ARE the message boards of today. I just don't think that is fair to new players looking for real information....fact based....math based information.