Can't say I've noticed any degradation. Then again, as a miner I mainly hang out in the BTC mining area and could care less about the alts areas nor 'privacy' issues related to holding/using BTC so mixers have always been a non-starter for me.
And there's another thing. There's people that are newbs to bitcoin that think they need to involve themselves with literally every part of the forum. I'm just like you @NotFuzzyWarm, except I like to hang out in Beginners and Help, Meta, and Project Development. I don't go
near mining because I don't
need to right now in my journey lol. Explaining that part about
BTC to people is so hard. It's a
journey.
I know this because I've fucking tried. I've tried with so many people PEER TO PEER STYLE to try and onboard them to this place and it just never fails to intimidate them for some reason! Now, every time I teach someone bitcoin, I like to hone in on their strengths and hyperfocus on one or two forum areas they might be interested in.
When my therapist asked me if I had any hobbies, I told her "bitcoin", she said "Oh! Are you a miner or a trader?",
I said neither, I am an educator and promote mass adoption efforts. She gave me a suprised look like, "Oh shit never heard that before".
There is so much room for education and mass adoption efforts, and I feel that mass adoption efforts start on this forum.