This site get's enough traffic, somebody is going to see the post.
It may not get answered immediately, nor is anybody obligated to answer at all. Sometimes it may take even a day or two before the right person logs on and spots the question.
I look at it as a kid saying "mom, mom, mom" or "dad, dad, dad" over and over again, like we didn't hear them the first time and drop everything we were doing to pay attention to them. I know thats kind of a harsh way of putting it (and this instance wasn't to that extent), but it's along those same lines. And I've seen it abused before.
Then other part is again with the clutter. Example: If it's a tires-specific section of forum, and people keep posting engine questions in it... It's no longer a useful forum, because all the tire related topics are spread out with other topics of an entirely different nature. It's not bringing in other ideas, it's pushing the ideas geared towards that specific section out.
Eventually there's so much information that nobody can read through it all. So we divide it into specific sections, specifically SO people can actually read through all the posts. I can't imagine how fast the forum topics would move if they were all lumped into one massive area on a site like this one. There's 100's if not 1000's of threads started every single day. And many times that number in posts.
I wouldn't worry about it too much. Just keep it in mind for next time.
