Personally, and this may be my personality , I spend little time in the chat forums. Occasionally I will participate in an industry specific meeting, but otherwise I find the chat forums a big waste of time.
Conversations are hard to follow, even when moderated.
In other words, yes, the technical problems that seem to plague these appearances make them worthless. The only time forums would be useful for promoting products and services is when it has been specifically touted as such. This is a fake email address. So many old members of this list were getting spam generated from siphons trolling the archives that I replaced all email addresses with randomly generated spam traps that forward mail to spam fighters. If you need to reach individuals mentioned in these archives, use a search engine to find their current location, as these addresses and archives date from 1994 to 1996.