"currently people join and then never talk".
This seems to me a like a default outcome; if you want something else, you need to take some specific steps.
One quick idea is to give all new members a questionnaire to fill -- then there will be something to talk about.
Another idea is to have a volunteer who will actively approach the new members and ask questions.
Maybe ask them "what are three problems in your life that you would need some help with?" (However, this makes people vulnerable, and potentially exposed to a predator attack.)
There has never been more need for young people to get together and talk.
Young people, 16-20, are facing the highest-leverage decisions of their lives; university, research, who to network with. And they're mostly doing it alone. A friend I met literally had nobody to talk about philosophy and alignment with in his daily life.
There are a lot of young talented people out there who haven't connected formally, and the payoff if done right is tremendous. Half of the conversations that produced substantial value in this community trace back to being in an in-group early (the rationalist community itself is an example of this).
There are hundreds of grant near-admits, autodidacts looking for people to talk to, motivated young people, scattered around the world. The infrastructure to connect them should already exist- how LessWrong exists for improving one's rationality, or the Alignment Forum for alignment research.
There have been attempts at this previously: ulisse's "lost ones" server started out with the promise of connection for people in this space (especially younger) but the main issue is retention. In ulisse's own words: "currently people join and then never talk".
So how do we fix this?
Communities that are driven toward a purpose usually start with a core group of 5 to 10 members (take Anthropic, for example, whose seven cofounders quit from OpenAI to make a four thousand employee company driven toward safety). What's more, interest-matched/based 1 on 1s make people with the same interests actually talk to one another instead of stumbling around in the dark, keeping the server active so it doesn't die out and become a ghost town. I also propose structured introductions when joining (e.g, who you are, what you're interested in) so people can find each other easier. (the lost ones already does this, and it's worked well so far).
So how can you help?
I'm looking for the first 5 to 10 people to help set this up alongside me right now who'll commit to showing up and talking for the first few months. Feel free to message me on LessWrong or Discord (@fluxxrider).
This could die just like the lost ones has, but it's better to try than have aspiring young people stumbling around in the dark.