I don't want to correlate this forum's comedown with the mixer ban, even though I've thought of it and it's likely one major factor, but what's the current picture of Bitcointalk according to you? To me, it's declining in genuine interest.
We're dealing with uninteresting topics. The "hottest" topic of discussion in the last months is Ordinals, followed by ETFs, and then an endless list of speculation-related threads, which were always a "thing" in the past, but gosh, that just seems like our sole concern nowadays.
Now, to that, add that we've lost valuable members, some of which were intellectually influential, and you have an Internet board filled with mostly crap. What's the problem?
It's logical if the hottest topic of discussion in the last months is Ordinals and ETFs, these two things are booming all over the world. When someone paints a pixelated dumb ape or dog or whatever dumbest thing it is and then they sell it for millions of dollars and get a money that's enough for comfortable life, everyone will definitely ask asking, what's life, how is that possible, why does the welder gets less money than the guy who drew pixelated staff and for sure, that becomes the hottest topic.
Yes, it's really noticeable when users like o_e_l_e_o leave, he was a super competent guy who always had the correct answer on every question, he is a huge loss. This forum needs to attract people like him but this forum is getting worse in terms that it's not upgrading software and user interface and young generation will probably completely ignore it, i.e. that will result in downfall.
At the moment I don't think that the situation is terrible, I only notice that o_e_l_e_o is not here but besides this, there isn't any significant worsening of the situation, this forum is still quite good, different and unique from others, I especially love the trust system here and the ability that businesses care about their reputation on this forum and many problems have solved because of this. Forum needs to use its own budget and upgrade and then things will go well.