On a different note, and as anecdotal evidence, I have been lurking on LW for years now, and went to a CFAR camp before posting a single comment - In fear of karma retribution and trolling. (I know that its a bad strategy and that I shouldn't care as much. Sadly, I'm not as good at self-modification as I would like to be sometimes.)

On the other had, lurking for a while before posting is very much what we want new users to do.