I'm going to keep this one short, you convey two big points that I don't agree with, and that are two opinions that could obviously split off a lot of people:
The forum has decayed to the point of unusability because the board has slowly morphed into a place for people to earn money rather than being about a place to talk about bitcoin.
"...earn money,
and trade rather than being..." I'm going to add that part to your definition, because yes : I probably agree that posts involving either trades or signature campaigns make off the majority of the posts on this forum. Just look at this post for example, or any big post where anyone feels like they can shove a +1 post count. It's as clear as day.
What I don't agree with, is your opinion on this "problem". EVEN YOU have a ChipMixer sig. I DONT have one and am still committing to this argument with you with absolutely no profit. THE MASSIVE MAJORITY wouldn't give a single fuck in my shoes, because behold, the rule of not just this forum, but the internet: No one has time to waste on arguments with anonyomus avatars online.
This is even harder for BTCtalk, BECAUSE it's a forum based around money. Newbies are going to come here all the time, to trade, make money, or scam.
So, the fact that you want to implement every draconian measure to completely shut down people from making money? You need to be extremely oblivious to not see how biased your situation is. I said it once, I'm going to say it again, see both sides of the coin. Unless you're willing to completely ban out sig campaigns as a whole and only keep classic banner ads -that would be a fun sight, wouldn't it!-, kindly stop referring to anyone other than hero or legendary as "leeches".
It's this opinion you have about people making money off the forums, that isn't objective. A few people might agree with you to completely stop campaigns from recruiting newbies. (BECAUSE they're heroes or legendaries) Others might not, like me! Because I'm a senior that can make good posts and don't want more baseless rules that make it harder for casual posters like me to make money.
I mean fuck off, over a 1000 words written the last 24 hours and still barely at +3 merit, which brings me to your next point.
You can't on word count or rank, but why not merit? It somebody writes a really great post it's almost certainly going to get a merit, and probably quite a bit of it, and merit is a pretty good indication of a quality post or not as users making generic nonsense will go unmerited.
This second point is also not objectively true. What is a great post? An ICO accouncement or sig campaign giving out free money that gets showered with merit? A well known user that can use a paintbrush and draw "bitcoin art" to sell to the community? Jesus man, PLEASE try to look at it from my perspective, and the perspective of a lot of above-average casual users. I could spend fuck-all months discussing like I'm doing now to barely make a 1/10th of what a legendary user would make taking a picture of a bitcoin tattoo on his ass.
So I said I was going to keep this short, and I think? I did. We're never going to agree because both the points above are always going to be biased. And I mean let's face it, this system isn't going to change even if 70% of the forum voted it off. Cheers.