[cultratradseo]

The importance of a forum as far as SEO goes would mainly fall on the site that owns the forum. Forums are really blogs before blogs were created. Users of a forum can get traffic and a tiny bit of SEO juice from a forum (providing the forum isn't a no follow)
But to get anything worth while as a user you much participate, play well with others, speak the language, add good relevant posts...It falls under the same deal as been mentioned here and there throughout this forum....content, if your posts aren't content rich...and if you can't pull that off, I'd suggest not wasting your time posting just to get a link.