I have left more than one online community for similar reason. The flow chart goes roughly like this:
I perfectly know this is absolutely stupid, and I try to avoid this behavior as much as I can, but it still pops up sometimes (still have to fully hack myself).
I suppose that you can use a canned "I have read your comment, will think about it and might or might not reply later" reply to break the pattern at step 3.
I often feel guilty for ignoring other people's comments or questions, and frustrated when other people seem to be ignoring me. If I can't indicate to someone exactly why I'm not answering, or can't receive such an indication myself, I can at least help my future selves and others obtain a better probability distribution over such reasons. To that end, I'm listing all of the reasons I can think of for someone to not respond to a comment/question, to save the effort of regenerating these hypotheses from scratch each time and prevent the possibility of failing to consider the actual reason. Note that these are not meant to be mutually exclusive.
If I missed any reasons (that happen often enough to be worth including in this list), please give them in the comments. See also this related comment.