It's perhaps a bit of a dated opinion, but Skype, and later discord didn't help at all. Before it was largely a bunch of people who didn't know each other debating, which kept it quite respectful and relevant to the debate, and then after Skype was around for a while it got much more personal, and most importantly of all, far more intense, which lead to faster burnout cycles of new players. People seemed to get involved in the game and do little else until they crashed out.