Madartej21 wrote:

A few repots and wiring and then you lack topic. You can't just post the same every time.

I think you don't get it.
It's not about only showing progressions or begging for help. It is also talking about bonsai, making friends, knowing each other.
Community formation, sense of belonging,

I get it, I even talked about it if you read my comments again. It would be nice to have talks about this art and maybe some off topic as well. But you asked why dont they stay in the first place. Because they need only a specific information and they leave. If they stay for a longer period of time, they leave when they have nothing more to learn here.

And then there is a few who sometimes have nice conversations and they get to know each other etc. But hey, not everyone is such a big internet man.

I think it is important to realize that a resource like a forum, is only usefull if there are active members. If everybody would just say "Yeah, I do not have anything to post, I just come for a question, and in a few months I might post another question" you loose the activity level needed to keep interest. And with this, the active members do walk away. And that is how we lost the experts. Too little posts on bonsai, too many disputes ith people who just come in with a mallsai .And lrukers who just pop one message a year, often besides the point and/or uninformed.

Being part of a forum takes energy, if you want that forum to be a success. (it is actually exactly why I did not join in a request from someone else to build a new Dutch forum for bonsai: Better be active on an existing, as it is too hard to get a large-enough community to seem active). So responding to threads, giving suggestions, building a shared ideas space. That is where the added value is, in my opinion. THere are dozens of websites on bonsai with reliable information. But sharing ideas is different.

Ivan wrote:

And, I can tell the difference between a short answer and an unpolite answer.

This has been discussed a lot. It is an international forum. And different countries/cultures have different ways of communicating. As this forum has an overbalance of Duthc, I would say it is the Dutch that you are mostly referring to.

Have a loko here: www.europeanmama.com/are-the-dutch-really-rude/
and this
www.amsterdamstay.com/are-the-dutch-a-rude-nation

The style of communicating with eachother may be perceived as rude. But in fact is the normal way of communicating. In a way, it is just what you are used to. The Dutch find a lot of other nationalities "fake" or "shallow" because "they never say what they mean". I suppose that is completely natural, if yu come from a country where you would consider the lack of sugar-coating in Dutch communicating "rude".

I would say there is no intercultural standard for "Rude".(e.g.,To flip the coin around: If I am asked "how are you", I would expect the person asking me how I am, to be interested in my state of being. Yet half of the world is very surprised, even annoyed, if I answer anything but the "I am fine, how are you". To who is rude there? The person pretending to be interested? Or the person who answers truthfully about how they are doing?)

Leatherback I understand it perfectly.
Japanese are always polite and smiling, even if they are feeling the opposite; Brazilians always loud and happy, even if poor; and so on.
It takes a bit of traveling to perceive the nuances.

Oh, I understand that completely. I can remember, here in Alabama, having people from Bell Labs come talk with people here and being told they were rude. They thought they were being polite, but the rather distinctive New Jersey accent put off the people who had rather distinctive southern accents. I would side with the Dutch on this. Say what you mean and get used to people saying what they mean. This can be done politely. So far I haven't seen anything here that I thought was impolite.

A term I have seen the first time here is mallsai. Does it mean a tree bought at a kiosk in the mall? A bad tree ( mal = evil in Latin and French)? Is it some obscure Japanese term?

Ivan wrote:

A term I have seen the first time here is mallsai. Does it mean a tree bought at a kiosk in the mall? A bad tree ( mal = evil in Latin and French)? Is it some obscure Japanese term?

In English, it means a mass produced plant, many of them badly grafted, sold in shopping malls, Ikea or Home Depot.
It's funny, because like in French, in Portuguese "mal" means bad, and "bom" means good; so "bonsai" is good and "mallsai" is bad, according to the sound of the words.

Madartej21 wrote:

And then there is a few who sometimes have nice conversations and they get to know each other etc

And there's at least one, who has got really nothing to post, but who enjoys reading all these nice conversations, as well as watching people's reaction to "short-rude" answers

Irka-Plyushka wrote:

And there's at least one, who has got really nothing to post, but who enjoys reading all these nice conversations, as well as watching people's reaction to "short-rude" answers

How come "nothing to post"?
No trees?
No mallsai?
No leaves turning yellow?
No unknown insects?
No dying Fukien Tea Trees?
LUCKY YOU!

I see very similar things in a number of things that I do. I am a professional musician, and I also teach individual lesson. More often than not, someone will come wanting 10 lessons to "fine tune" their playing. After about two or three they usually discover that this process cannot be done only by taking lessons, but also involves regular, consistent, and determined practice. If I had 100 people come to me with this idea, maybe 2 of them would stick it out.
I'm also involved in martial arts, but I'm not an expert there, but you see people come for two months, think they should be given a black belt, and when they aren't they leave.

Bonsai require 100 times the patience that either of those two things do. most people are not up to the challenge. Which is not a bad thing, it just is. I also am still a beginner in Bonsai, but I enjoy the challenges that it has given me and enjoy learning.