Alatar, I take your point, but that's not what I meant. There are two things that I glance to, in order to see whether someone is "invested" in any given board. The first is their join date, and the second is their post count.
(to use TORC for the first point, since this board is too new) I wouldn't somehow value the opinion of someone who joined in 2000 over the opinion of someone who joined in 2002. But, I'd possibly value it (wrt to board related stuff) over someone who joined in January 2005, simply because the 2000 and 2002 posters have been part of the board longer, have seen it go through more, etc.
The second thing, however, is that some people join a board early and disappear for long periods of time. There are people who joined TORC in 2000 and 2001 who have postcounts of under 100-200, because they only sporadically participated. Unless I see a statement from them to indicate that they were there the entire term, but just lurked, I'd assume that they only made 100 posts in five years because they had periods of sporadic activity, and weren't as invested in the board as a member who joined in 2000 and had 5000 posts.
Honestly, if someone has 600 posts and someone else has 1600, not a big deal. It wouldn't even occur to me to pay attention. But, if someone has 10 posts, and someone else has 8000, I might view what the 8000-post poster has to say about the future of the board with more seriousness (unless that 8000 post person was clearly just a spammer in talk threads who didn't have much to say).
And in threads not relevant to the future of the board, I couldn't care less about post count. Those are the ones in which I participate the most. In recent Symposium threads on animal rights, Scalia, gay marriage, abortion, and women's health issues, I highly doubt that any post count is relevant. I couldn't tell you what any of the participants' post counts were.
Honestly, I care about writing posts in which I communicate something relevant, and I tend to be verbose. I couldn't care less what the number next to my name is, but I think it's a matter of harmless fun for some people.
EDIT And the bottom line is, active members know who else is active, and how they are contributing. In my online experience, respect is shown for serious, thoughtful contributions, not for spam.