For the OP,

What do you call the forum is for the period before 2017?
Did the forum been dead before 2017?
The following time series plot (for more details, please visit the original thread to get them), shows that months, nearly one year after the implementation of merit system, monthly registered accounts have fallen to almost the same range before spamming endemic in 2017 and 2018.
The merit system launch is a shock for spammers, whislt it is extremely good for the forum.

Eventually, spamming endemic has been likely wipened out, for now.

In my opinion, the forum has not dead.
In contrast, it has been realived.

Quote from: tranthidung on February 18, 2019, 03:24:08 AM

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Notes:
It's not exact intra-month registered accounts over years due to days on which theymos scrapped data.
However, we can assumed those figures are for intra-month data.

ABSTRACT
(1) 50% of observed months have intra-month registered account range from 2311 to 27790 (the interquartile range);
(2) 50% of observed months have intra-month registered account above or below 10432 (the median);
(3) The intra-month registered account fell 91.6% from its all time high in 2017 at 238400 to 20046; whilst the bitcoin decreased nearly 83.9%.
(4) The demotion on Junior Members in September 2018 probably caused intra-month registered accounts fell considerbaly later months.
(5) The difference in means of before and after periods (cut-off timepoint is Sept. 2018) is -63.6%.

Time-series plot

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There are some coincidence between plots.

Quote from: DdmrDdmr on February 19, 2019, 10:01:20 AM

The following charts show:
- The number of historical Bitcointalk posts created between 2 different consecutive readings (*)
- BTC price evolution in USD (source: /www.barchart.com).

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