Although I'm a relative newcommer to this board, I suspect that one thing that keeps people polite around here is the knowledge that new posters -can't- search, and telling them to do so is futile.
Personally, as soon as I get some money (college and broke are practically synonymns) I'm going to donate simply because sometimes I really do need to search... but until then...
I do love these boards though. The maturity level is greatly appreciated. A fellow student was looking over my shoulder while I was browsing a while ago, and when I told him it was a D&D message board, his first question was "I wonder how many threads need to be locked per day"
He was shocked when I said "I haven't seen any, and only seen one that was headed in that directio (but with a gentle nudge from a mod, things were polite again)"