This study analyzes 832,058 forum threads from Eclipse’s community forums to understand participation, content, and sentiment. It reveals that senior developers are the most active responders to both bug-related and non-bug-related threads. The sentiment among developers is variable, highlighting the complexity of knowledge sharing within the Eclipse community. The paper suggests that project-specific forums, despite the popularity of platforms like Stack Overflow, are valuable for fostering community and communication, and recommends using positive procedural approaches when engaging in such forums.