Threaded discussions for support

Product support is one of the most common applications for threaded discussion today. Software companies, hardware manaufacuturers, service operators and others run support forums for their products. Employess with knowledge of the product often participate in these forums as well.

In the following example, I posted a question to a support forum for Audacity a popular, open source audio editor. As you see, several others joined the thread. We diverged onto related questions, and finally got back to an answer to my intial query.

This sort of willingness to help a stranger is rooted in the early academic Internet culture, but it persists among many today. Do you think it will eventually die out?What are the implications of that for management? For society? What motivates people to help others? Is this a question for experts in management and leadership or for religious experts?

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