[holler]

Disclosure I'm building a topical chat site at https://sqwok.im

One thing I've noticed is many conversations will start out on-topic but eventually the active participants will exhaust whatever they have to say and it will pivot to more casual conversation. It isn't necessarily bad, but it creates the problem where new/arriving users see a conversation that appears unconnected from the topic. I recently received a bunch of feedback to that affect.

Another factor that someone else already mentioned is simply that many people like to lurk and don't want to engage in live discussion. Also not a problem if the previous issue is solved.