I was talking to a fellow bitcoiner about this forum IRL and he said he thought it was "degenerating"

I disagree. I find it's getting better.
Who's right?
As of lately there's been a few people extorting others and threatening their lives if people don't pay money, plus following them around constantly making posts about how everything is a scam and crap to destroy people's reputation. The sad part is that even with multiple people reporting these situations, nothing is being done. Basically people can destroy your reputation if you don't want to give them however much money they want, and you can't do crap to defend yourself from it.
The mods seriously need to start being more reactive and step in on this stuff. It's getting bad.