It has purpose to me. When I see someone who has posted ~500 posts and asks something that is generally a "/help <something>" answer, I'm more inclined to help them more thoroughly figuring this person is familiar with board policy and therefore knows he/she should have read /help first and most likely did but didn't understand something. However if the person has ~1 post, I'm going to assume he/she didn't take the time to try and find an answer in the help file. Same goes for things like "use the search feature" if the guy has ~1 post I'll say "use the search feature" if the guy has ~500 I'm going to assume the person did use the search feature and didn't find what he/she was looking for.
You might not think thats a good reason but don't make like no one else here does that, because I'm sure many people do.
