I take your point Mark.
I guess another factor is that a lot of the more tech-aware people got tired of doing the same answer to the same question over and over - I know I did, though you never seemed to mind - and stopped replying quite so often as they used to.
When TS had its own area, I used to discipline myself to slip over there every now and then and try to do three or four answers. Or else I'd get really bored if the General talk was all about subjects I had no interest in, and trawl TS looking for something I could contribute to.
Once TS slipped into general, I certainly saw more of the queries, but probably answered less of them - particularly as I mostly used to try to answer threads with no replies (I always feel sorry for someone who is posting and getting no replies), and once TS merged into General, these became rare. But, as you say, the quality of the replies was often rather lacking.