It's pretty unlikely that there are space-faring aliens inside our own galaxy at all. If they were moving at near c they would take around 50,000 [edited] years to get here - next to no time. In which case it would be quite a coincidence that they evolved to the "space-travel" stage almost exactly when we did. So: it is more likely that we are locally first.
If they were traveling here directly or expanding in uniform radius at near light speed, yes. But if they're hopping from star to star in a grid network, the distance to travel is much greater. Plus, traveling at near c may not be a practical use of energy at any level of technological sophistication.
I wouldn't be at all surprised if intelligent life, let alone spacefaring life, is rare enough that you would expect to find less than one such species per average galaxy, but I don't think the fact that we haven't been encountered yet is very strong evidence for this.
In a recent thread, SarahC said:
... so here's the place to float ideas around: is there an area you know a lot about? A topic you've been considering writing about? Here's the place to mention it!
From a poll on what people want to see more of, the most votes went to:
Some that got less votes:
... but there are certainly many more things that would be interesting and useful to the community. So what can you teach us?