A sad demise to a once great forum.
However it did its job, crypto was born here. Whatever it turned into nobody should be ungrateful to bct but it's okay to be disappointed with what it became in the end. It is like the parent that turned into everything it taught you to shun and reject.
When judging bitcointalk, you should keep in mind that forums are not as popular as they used to be, that's the simple fact and in that regard bitcointalk ain't no different than many others. I've been active on various forums (and still am) for ~20 years, and situation is pretty much similar everywhere; old users are becoming less active (which is perfectly natural) while younger generations have bunch of options nowadays that those in the late 90s/early 00s didn't have.
I don't know how it was here before, but for me golden age of forums was somewhere between 2002-2007 when not so many people had access to it, making signal to noise ratio much better
But with everything said, if you want quality conversations, forums are way to go, and that's the main reason why I prefer it over reddit/Discord/Telegram/whatever.