The content of the communication is based heavily on the etiquette. Some places want a quick pithy answer, some places want a deeply thought out answer that adds something important to the conversation. I considered this when I made my reply. So pondering longer wouldn't have helped there. For me, anyway. Do you think that pondering longer might have allowed you to realise that?

Message boards are very different to LJ. They show, for instance, threads in the order of their last comment, which means that you're alerted to where the discussons are happening. Whereas you have no way of knowing that a post from a week ago on LJ still have an active discussion going on.