Short answer is: You're not ignored; you're just not heard.
VERY Long Answer is: Try to picture to yourself, all the traffic that goes across FreeRepublic in the course of a day. Can one person follow it - ALL of it? At once? Can't be done - so that's where we analysts come into the game. Folks watching different areas for different things. Each mission has a unique CCIR list - Commander's Critical Information Requirement. It's a Green-suit term, but it applies to this as well.
The analysts comb the airwaves, and the Web, and take in reports from other agencies, and all that gets lumped into the common pot. It's then, the staffer's call to see what gets passed up the chain, or over to the other agencies. "Hey George, did you catch this report off the wire?" That kind of thing. Some of it's informal, others are passed through channels.
My mission is MSCA - Military Support of Civilian Authority. We're the guys who detail the National Guard assets to the states in case of emergency - weather, natural disaster, 9-11 redux, etc. As such, we have traffic monitors, Web surfers (me), and duty watches set up to catch it all.