You're right about the "home turf" dynamic. I certainly recall feeling that when I was a regular daily user.
I was hoping some of the relationships I had forged over there would be sufficient to get those users to check out SN. I was responsive to the comments on my post, but I haven't been persistent about hyping up Stacker News. I probably posted about it a few times when I first found it.
I do expect it to be a stale echo chamber at this point
Largely, yes