The only member that we lost recently is o_e_l_e_o, or who else?
Recently, yes, but there have been some very colorful members of the forum who've left in the past few years, members who made this place much less dull than it has been as of late. Lauda, TMAN, TECSHARE, Vod (sort of), and some of the chronic trolls like cryptohunter even. Right now when I look at new threads I don't see a hell of a lot of interesting ones--although that might be because I have a taste for juicy drama.
Besides that, I'd say the quality of the average post has remained more or less the same, i.e., people are making mediocre posts for whatever signature campaign they're in, making very general comments that don't add much to the threads they're in, and either displaying an utter lack of proficiency in writing or generally being dull and uninteresting. So yeah, I'd say bitcointalk is asymptotically approaching, albeit very very slowly, what cryptotalk.org was when Yobit started that abomination of a forum a few years ago.
OK, that last sentence is too harsh but I've got a toothache and am ready to strangle the internet.
Most dramas always lose fun as time creeps by. Gradually have read some old dramas in the forum that actually intrigued me, regarding the change of the forum admin and cases where strangers seriously claimed to be Satoshi and demands ownership of the forums. Those threads will hardly show up, again, in the forum, due to the change in focus. Lots of users have other purposes behind their membership here other than becoming good forum members. Therefore limiting their post context.
Creating valuable threads reduces as the focus of members goes mainly to hit signature quota. Writing requires lots of work, especially for non-natives, which I'm a part of, so the interesting quality writing skills that actually lifts the fun or argument in a thread would be lacking.Those dramas if you may say, kept some members in the forum. Because the mentioned members above seemed to have left when all the troubles causing the drama got resolved. The forum is a kind of calm and lots of people who began during the early days may not be comfortable around here anymore. Nothing interests them well enough to stay in the forum, I guess.