If everyone lived by that saying, no one would be guilty of anything. It's a cop out - but I don't care enough to continue this discussion.
I know you don't want to continue the discussion. You just want to criticize and then be free from having to explain yourself.
It's obviously ruled and influenced by those who dominated it early, and by those who are close to theymos.
They "dominated it" through providing consistently valuable contributions, the same way the maintainers of Bitcoin Core have "dominated" bitcoin. The fate of the forum was entrusted to theymos because he proved himself to have good leadership qualities, governing the forum in the same spirit of bitcoin governance.
I've seen enough corruption to know that corruption exists,
Its an entirely opt-in system, and nobody ever claimed it was perfect. If you don't like it, move on. Nobody is keeping you here.
Personally I'm not sure we could ask for a better dictator. Things could have gone horribly awry and they really didn't. Instead, we have a careful balance of freedom of speech and a system that motivates people to behave in a (mostly) civilized manner. If you feel its "corrupt", why waste a single further second of your life here?
That's a start if the forum wants to make a change - though honestly, I think it's too late. The way this forum is will not change, and if it does, it probably won't be done right, or will be usurped by those who are cozy with the way it is. Those who wanted to change it are probably already gone, and the ones with influence have such influence because of the way it is. All one can do at most is critique, but not expect change - nor fight for it, otherwise they'll likely lose a lot of time only to make next to no difference.
This is perhaps what is funniest to me: the idea that Bitcointalk
needs to do anything, other than exist. It doesn't need to change, evolve, adapt, or do anything except preserve the posts of Satoshi and other early contributors. The day that satoshi's posts change or disappear is the day I'll call it quits.