Hello, I am Sue Wolff and I work in Curriculum and Faculty Development at City University of Seattle. We are headquartered in Bellevue, WA - US, but have 12 practitioner-focused campuses around the world.
We require all faculty, regardless of delivery mode, to use the Blackboard LMS to post their contact information, available consulting hours, course documents and assignments, a welcome announcement, and weekly grades.
From this requirement, we can infer that the purpose of a faculty introductory post is to inform students who, how, and when they can contact someone about their course. We require nothing more of it, even of online only faculty. Therefore, the incentive to make one's self more knowable, present and human is internal to the instructor's own value system and understanding of social learning pedagogy.
I look forward to this discussion of faculty introductory posts.