> Wow, this is really interesting. When I first came to chat more than two years ago one of the things that made me come back was the friendly atmosphere I encountered. Specifically, people greeted me with "exclamation points and happy welcomes" my first day in chat. And it was really cool that people stopped what they were talking about for a brief moment in order to say hi to me. It made me feel special.
> This doesn't occur anymore.
> What happened?


What happened is that tons of people now use chat instead of just a few at a time. I've stopped yelling hello at people whenever somebody enters the room, simply because doing so reduces chat to the following:

*somebody has entered.
Chatter: HEY!!!!! HELLO!!!
OtherChatter: Hi!
Chatter3: Hi there!
somebody: Hello all
Person: hi somebody
AnotherPerson: Hello again, somebody!
FourthChatter: welcome back somebody!
ScreenName: HELLO!
Chatter19: Hey there, somebody
Person24: Hello
Person463: Hi somebody
somebody: So, what is everybody talking about?
*somebodyelse has entered
Chatter: HEY!!!!! HELLO!!!
OtherChatter: Hi!
Chatter3: Hi there!
somebodyelse: Hello all
Person: hi somebodyelse
AnotherPerson: Hello again, somebodyelse!
FourthChatter: welcome back somebodyelse!
ScreenName: HELLO!
Chatter19: Hey there, somebodyelse
Person24: Hello
Person463: Hi somebodyelse

You see what I'm getting at here? When there are even ten or eleven people in the room, constant hellos and goodbyes make chat meaningless to me. There ISN'T any chat. It's just a random greeting room. The only time I greet people now is when I enter a room containing only a few people, or when somebody comes in that I am genuinely very excited to see there.

I don't particularly like the way I've stopped greeting and farewelling people as a matter of course, and I do realise it is less welcoming for new chatters. But it just felt like a necessary tradeoff for the privilege of having actual chat in a chatroom.