Exactly. When I got access for the first time in the early 90s it took me a few days to wrap my mind around it but after that I never had trouble finding groups of interest. Tools like search, built in group name searches, etc made it easy
...and about 2% of the population thinks Linux is an awesome OS, easy to use, loves the command line, prefers "grep" to clicking on a search box. Fortunately using an OS doesn't really depend on the participation of others, but a discussion forum that is widely viewed as inferior to some other option quickly succumbs to Metcalfe's law and empties out.