I frequented the Bicycling Mag forum for a few years and at that time the Buying forum (all about equipment) was the second most active forum. I see now that what used to be the Buying forum is called Bikes and Gear and is the second or third most active forum depending on if you look at the Topics or Posts count.

In that forum there were people, myself included, who would browse through it to see if someone was asking a question about something we had experience with, and we'd offer our opinions. There were several experienced cyclists who rarely ventured out of that forum ... they just stayed in there offering advice and chatting about gear etc. It was, and appears to still be, a very popular forum.

http://forums.bicycling.com/eve/forums

Personally I ignore most of the equipment/gear/bike questions here because:
1) I figure someone else will answer it.
2) I figure people will start a series of mocking threads based on it, so why bother getting involved.
3) The person who asked the question put "Help!!" or something equally uninformative in the subject line ... I don't bother looking at those.
4) The person who asked the question didn't give any background info on themselves at all which would help me or someone give an informed response.

If we had an Equipment/Gear forum we could have a Newbie Sticky suggesting that newbies put some information in both the subject line and body of the message that would prompt someone to answer the question. Such a forum could also possibly help narrow the search for information on something. And experienced cyclists could go there to chat about the newest wheels on the market or whatever.