I attended most (maybe all) of the chats in DG3 Term 1. During that first term as a citizen, my insightful comments about the turns, thoughtful questions, and sheer cheek in questioning Chieftess's domestic agenda and advocating something else gave me enough of a reputation to get elected as Science advisor the 2nd term, domestic the 3rd, etc. Simply put, talking in the chat with the "veterans" of DG1 & DG2 is the main reason I successfully integrated into the society and stuck around.
While DP I've had a lot of people in the chat save me from making big mistakes by yelling "stop" right before I hit enter, and asking "did you remember to ... ". I've been the recipient of some very good advice. I've also been pressured to do something wrong and resisted that pressure.
I've found out that Furiey likes cereal and orange juice for breakfast. Others have found out about my kids, and mine aren't the first ones people have heard about via the chat. Remember Shaitan's away status being set to "away - wiping butts"?
We've had people using Elvish (LOTR) terms, discussing the merits of camel spit, and campaigning for office during chats. We've had military advisors suggesting which unit in a stack should attack first, or which city to capture next when the plan is for a 10 turn siege and the city falls in 2.
What does a chat do? It gives us a place to have fun, witness history, influence our civ's destiny, get to know each other, quote poetry, or play a virtual jukebox (remember Rik's "now playing" that eerily matched its titles to game events)?
Why are chats under-attended? One big issue is DPs with schedules which don't line up with the citizens, like my late evening/early morning chats. I think a bigger issue is all the whining and complaining about the possibility that the decisions from the forum will be ignored if we let people talk in the chat. What's the fun in going to a chat if you can't say anything for fear of being villified in the forum?
Let the people who attend chats have their fun. Let them think they influence decisions by being there. If a DP is going to do something anyway but asks for input to confirm it, it makes the people at the chat
feel better even if they didn't actually change anything. And if the DP gets input and then decides not to follow it, then the chat people can do the complaining about how the forum has too much power.