Many people left because the forum is overrun by spammers.
We agree on the major reason is spam that is number 1 reason why old member feel it's a waste of time being here and it has been discussed gazillion times.
But there are many other small reasons which are causing seniors to leave this forum:
1. Lack of innovation It's been 8/9 years and bitcointalk.org did not evolve. It's still an old forum, old design, old fashioned, single point of failure (password), no notifications whatsoever, etc. I'm sure many of you may disagree with me but I'm a computer engineer and people get bored of seeing same thing after few years. All software companies have been updating their product on regular basic in span of 2-3 years. If you can't change anything... change the design. Give some new look and new feel to the users.
If we look around linkedin, stackoverflow and quora how they have evolved in last few years. Responsive design, mobile apps.
What I'm missing most on bitcointalk is notifications. I should get notified when someone replies to my Topic, ok there is email but it's so damn difficult to track. Give me some notification bar or counter to let me know that there is something new going on. I want to know if someone tags/quote me, that's what healthy discussion is supposed to be "engagement".
Yes this was all ok back in 2010, but today no this can't work, bitcointalk has to change from it's old school. BTW where is the new software for the forum?
2. Lack of Management Involvement Yes harsh but truth again. See the recent example of
howeycoins, people were so happy to see
Theymos is here. We are missing this so much. Why bitcointalk succeed back in days? Because Satoshi himself was here he was engaged in discussions with people. Yes I understand
Theymos,
Cycrus you guys are very busy.
But buys in what? Please let us know in your busy schedule there is some space for bitcointalk also. Please keep us updated at least what is going on in the background for bitcointalk.
If Thyemos and Cycrus keep old and seniors members involved, I guess many of the old members would still be here and they will come back too.
3. Focus of discussion is diverted Back in days bitcointalk was about "bitcoin", but today no its f*cking damn about Bounties and ANN that's all.
Let's accept this is also part of evolving, Bitcoin can live with it. Still BTC market Dominance is 38.9% not bad. So what did we do here? Nothing just sit and watch them spam bitcointalk.
There should be strict checks on Bounties and ANN threads, bitcointalk should help to minimize the scam and only legit announcement and Bounties should be allowed to stay. Let the bounties and ANN thread should be created by company's account only. As soon as someone realizes something fishy or scam going on it should be "nuked" immediately (I like this term "nuke" used by hilariousandco so often).
Yes it need time and investment but come on
owners this is your baby. How can you allow someone to scam here? Yes we can't control but as soon it becomes clear why not nuke and stop it.
4. bitcointalk is money making platformNo it's not!!! It's platform to discussion your ideas of making money, to get honest opinions on your thoughts and ideas. PoS was coined here on bitcointalk, yes ethereum also started from here. So bitcointalk is not all about just ranking up and started earning free money by shitposting.
Yes you might ask me how I'm I suppose to say this being junior member, yes I'm newbie and I'm sorry if I said something wrong, but this what I feel you can ignore it happily.
Also I'm not paying for bitcointalk so I'm not suppose to question any thing, you own it and you know better how to run it. But being Bitcoin enthusiast I don't want o see bitcointalk die in cold.