To those who never make/respond to open posts.

Stop that.

You are part of a community, and only responding to the same people over and over again is shutting out other people.

As members of a community, you should aim to interact with as many people as you can, and give other people opportunity to interact with you.

The key to engaging new people and starting new plotlines, is to post new, open posts. Too often I have seen people only ever respond to ongoing threads, and never make open posts, so that others don’t have the opportunity to engage them.

Conversely, I have seen lots of people make open posts that never get replies. The best thing you can do is, each time you log on, check for open posts. If your community is small or inactive, there should be a few open posts. Take time to respond to some of them rather than post your own. Even if the OP is away, and doesn’t come back for a while, it will give them something to come back to, and feel good about.

Conversely, don’t only respond to ongoing posts that you are involved in, you should start some of your own. Perhaps a new one each time you log on, just to give people opportunity to speak to you.