I think there’s a few factors contributing to the low amount of discussion/participation.

First and foremost, we are small, much, much, much, much, much smaller than most communities out there. We’ve got a few hundred users, and of those maybe a few dozen which are active in any given month. It’s rare we see new faces around here (hello everyone who has recently registered!). More importantly we’ve got to respect the 90-9-1 rule. Most people don’t participate. Even for those that do participate, their likelihood to participate in a particular community or a particular comment will only reflect a portion of their contribution.

Secondly, I think many of the users who have come to this platform are tired of shitty bigoted and hateful speech that they’ve seen on so many huge platforms. They’re less likely to share their opinions on polarized issues or less likely to want to participate in charged discussions. Often times these are the ones which garner the most attention and commenting. In their hopes to create a safe space, one which is uniquely nice, they may unfortunately find themselves self-censoring, still hurt and feeling raw from experiences elsewhere on the internet.

Third, as has been mentioned here and is often mentioned on new platforms, tech saavy users are usually the first adopters, and they often have a restricted set of interests. This is why we see a lot more activity and discussion in tech and tech-related spaces. More activity in these spaces draws more users who are generally active in these spaces and you get a bit of an echo chamber going on. If we want activity more evenly spread out, we need to collectively prioritize it (try to find non-tech related things to share) as well as spread word of this place to non-techies and be willing to handhold them through the process of learning how to use a website like this.