it is not like the days gone by when there were lots of people being down voted for making comments on post or for asking questions on post

Yep, and so i do think there should be more activity from the smaller accounts.

When a person makes the plunge to join where do they go from there? Where are the user guides? Where is the how-to page, the FAQ page.

I think this is a fair point - the user-journey is not so clear.