As others have already said, questions provide the occasion for us to do something we enjoy doing - track down some obscure song, or pass on some bit of information about a less obscure song, or share some insight we think we might have about the meaning of a line in as song, or gossip with other Mudcatters about it. If they'd just found out the answer by googling that wouldn't have happened. And where's the fun in that?

I can't see how it matters if the person who asks the question comes back and says thank you or not. It's pleasant if they do, and especially so if they then stick around and become part of the continuing Mudcat, but if they don't, so what? It's not like they made me do something I didn't want to do anyway, or I wouldn't have done it. In any case, for all I know they did come back and say thank you, but I never spotted it, because there are a lot of posts and a lot of threads. Perhaps they said thank you where I never happened to see it.