It was the average schmo on those boards. There were almost 10,000 on one of the gun message boards. Response time to a message was a little slower since most people logged in once a day instead of spending all day in there. If you think about it, most people on the current forums don't log in everyday either. Some go days, weeks or months without participating. Since there were so few boards, the number of people stayed higher and a lot of information was shared. The difference was the total number of people participating was smaller, simply because not everyone had computers or used them that much.

But, if someone said they posted on a 'forum' back in the 80's, they probably did. Or they probably read about it back them. And, yes, there were a bunch of references to vendors and places to get stuff. Many vendors took part in those boards for that reason, same as today. No pictures to brag about, but, plenty to read.