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wedrifid comments on Reasons for someone to "ignore" you - Less Wrong Discussion
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My most frequent non-reply cause: "Technical difficulties. They first read your comment via a mobile device, composed (mentally) a reply that would take too long to type on that medium and two days later they either forget to type it out via keyboard, no longer care about the subject or think that a late reply would be inappropriate given developments in the conversation."
For example Gwern recently had to remind me about a reply to a Modafinil tolerance question that had become neglected during travel.
Also add in "Previous comments by them in the thread had been downvoted or otherwise opposed and they choose to accede to the implied wishes of the community rather than try to fight it or defy it." (Given that this one is the primary purpose of the karma system we should expect it to work sometimes.)
Apart from those two the list seems exhaustive.
I'm going to update this from most frequent to most salient. Now that I'm thinking about it I am observing and recalling from the past all sorts of other 'ignore' decisions that just occur almost naturally without active consideration. By the time we reach adulthood many of the countless details of how to interact productively with other humans have been crystallized as social skills that don't require conscious strategic attention.
An example that spring to mind is when a comment has missed the point of the context and so doesn't make sense but it is not important enough to embarrass the author by explaining or challenging. Letting the point pass tactfully can be better, especially when their point would have been valid if the context said what they thought it said. There are a lot of variants along these lines. It can probably be generalized to "They don't wish to embarrass you when the issue isn't important".
Technically the above is a combination of "signalling/status seeking", "instrumental, other" and "prolonging or causing personal enmity"---you are not sending a signal that the other person may take as a challenge and you are not potentially (incrementally) alienating an ally and so are thereby expecting to have higher status while also making the other (incrementally) less frustrated. But just using those generic categories probably misses the point.
I often do this myself (generally not respond to some comment to avoid embarrassing its author), but feel guilty and frustrated about it.
Frustrated: What if I'm wrong, either about my interpretation of the comment, or its merit (e.g., whether it really missed the point), or its importance? If I don't answer then I won't find out. (Of course a lot of the times I can use votes to help me decide, but sometimes not many people are watching the thread and all the comments in it are hovering around 0.)
Guilty: The other person may be wasting a lot of cognitive resources trying to figure out why I didn't answer.