No.
This is a forum for development, not a forum for casual conversation. Making a general category will also attract non-developers to the forum, simply because they want to chat, and the forums would be destroyed by unprofessional users, non-developers, and trolls.
If you want a quick chat, you can DM developers (but don’t keep bugging them if they don’t want to talk), or you could try different social media like Discord, Twitter, etc.
I doubt this given that a majority of the platform is still Developer stuff and non-developers will have no interest in that, at least not enough to sit and read through it for three hours. That alone is enough of a deterrent for non-developers / unprofessional users.
If users find out there’s a category for general conversation, they won’t care about 3 hours of read time. For all I know, they can just go to a DevForum post and leave the room for a few hours.
It doesn’t work like that, you must be actively reading through posts. Three hours is a long time to be reading, it took me maybe 30-50 days worth of visits to reach the time needed to join the Forum so I doubt non-developers would have the patience to do that.
Again, your underestimating the determination of Roblox users. If I missed the Roblox Forums I would gladly spend 3 hours mindlessly scrolling through topics to get access to something similar. And you could easily get a bot to just select random topics and scroll through them for 3 hours.
And it took me a day and a half (Only because I started reading late in the day). The fact is that this isn’t good evidence to support your argument because changes from person to person. Again, if your determined, 3 hours of scrolling through posts (or getting a bot to do it, if you want) is nothing for getting access to what you as a player see as a new Roblox Forums.
This really is just assuming things, it will vary from person to person but the vast majority will not as the Forum is still strictly for Developer content. A random player will not sit and scroll through three hours of developer content just to be able to chat occasionally. The purpose of this is for Developers to have a common, moderated place to discuss loosely tied ROBLOX / Developer stuff that doesn’t fit in any of the current categories. It’s not going to be a “OMG GUESS MY FAVORITE HAT” type of thing, but a more structured and professional form of the old Forum.
I ask you to message me if you want to continue discussing this further, I will not be responding to any further replies here.
I disagree because like @souppression said, that’s the lounge category & if it was open to members, it probably wouldn’t end very well.
I also think that this is a developer forum and a general category wouldn’t fit, I’d rather keep things on topic.
While I agree with this, I think it’s quite funny because I’ve been on the forum for a year and I’m still a member lol 
Not gonna lie, this category wouldn’t make sense. What WOULD make sense is their own discord server.
This would just be a recreation of the old forums.
God…
Or they could just temporarily lock #development-discussion … like 5 topics came about in 3 minutes about a stinking rumor of voice chat…
For the record, it is not three hours. I’m not sure what the point is in bringing up statistics, though; just say non-developers won’t be interested in reading development stuff to get access to what would be essentially a glorified Discord server.
I don’t know why people think that non-developers wouldn’t read the devforum, some of these users have even been promoted to regular, and some are star creators that don’t do developing, or at least show that they do.
So it absolutely happens. I’ve even scrolled around a #development-discussion topic a week ago or so, and one user even said they weren’t a developer, but gave their thoughts on that topic.
Are you forgetting that it has been impossible for members to rank up since September 2020?
Certainly not.
Having more relaxed, public discussions on this forum is a privilege - one which is earned by proving you’re familiar with how to use the forum (to achieve Regular). Just because promotions are on hold does not mean this privilege should just be given to all Members for the sake of it because this would do far greater harm than good.
This is especially so when you consider the giant influx of new members who have very little idea with how to actually use the forum; they should not be granted this privilege.
Roblox developers already waste enough time on Discord. I’m sure you can find places to chat that won’t waste even more.
Let’s not give DET more nonsense and filth to sift through. Roblox forums failed for a reason.
They removed the way to get regular, lounge is now inaccessible to new members. I have no idea why they did this, they should add a way to get regular In 2020.
Because It got raided by some youtuber I cannot name, and the amount of trolls and scammers on it was overwhelmimg.