That was very well put deathbydanish....
Since I've been on a couple of other forums including a car forum for my car, SHOforum.com, I can say from experience that AA is much more tolerant of n00bs and plain stupidity than SHOforum. The admins on SHOforum are very banhappy, and kids either smart up, get banned, or get ridiculed off of the forum. This leads to a very mature environment, although with it being an auto forum there aren't going to be many kids under 16....
Before I joined up on AA, or even SHOforum for that matter, I spent hours just reading stickied posts or using the search engine to get a feel of the forum and identify the admins of the forum as well as the guys who knew what they were talking about. I initially only made an account to RSVP for stuff, because most of the information I need can be found with a quick search.
I wonder if part of the reason many of the younger kids treat the forum as a chat site is because of social media sites like Facebook. I'm still relatively young at 20, but I didn't have a Facebook til 17, and FB is not a forum. And this forum is not Facebook.