I feel sorry for the users such as yourself that missed the bitcointalk golden era. It was so awesome and everyone was so supportive of each other and willing to assist building projects. It was such an amazing time that I'm still willing to put up with the trolling here and continue to do the right thing in the face of harassment as a thank you to Bitcoin.
That old time would have been about learning and sharing because bitcoin hadn't blown up so much. People used to have their bitcoin addresses in their Sig space for tips. Now that bitcoin is money, it brings all the politics and power struggle with it. Then there is the cross-cultural aspect resulting in confusion and difference of opinions.
We all wish we were here earlier but to be honest, it isn't so bad even now.
I spend a vast majority of my day sitting behind a screen working on various projects that are mostly non-Bitcoin related. If it wasn't for the activity metric and lack of interesting community projects here as a result of the horrendous atmosphere that has been created, I would likely ignore him completely like I did for many years before this place became what it now is.
I don't know why people blame the atmosphere here for lack of community projects. The reality is that the older bunch here just stopped giving a damn about "community" or "projects". Most "Devs" moved on to swankier things and the indie/ bootstrapped nature of the projects based on bitcoin simply died out. It was only natural for drama to fill the vacuum with projects being limited to gambling and a few mixer services.
The people who made it big here in various ways, either through escrows, collectible sales or even shilling ICOs, have eventually just vanished or stick to their own part of the jungle. Nobody really talks about actually putting effort to develop blockchain based projects or utilize the chain in some way. In fact, Vod is one of the few old members who is actually putting out things in the Project development section. It is quite false to blame the "environment" here when the reality is that the people who made it big here eventually left because of better monetary prospects outside. Mostly in employment at private companies.
There are few OGs here who can blame the "community" when its you people who stopped giving a damn about the forum. People still fighting for DT1, against spammers etc are simply doing the hard, dirty work to keep some semblance of sanity. With all due respect, save the OG nostalgia. We are not missing anything. The forum rocks and we see interesting people all the time. Ohh and yeah, the ERC-20 devs and scammers get a lot of eyeballs and traction for whatever they come up with. Its bitcoiners fault that this is not the case with bitcoin based projects.
EDIT: This response appears to be a bit retaliatory. I want to add that I don't think forum OGs owe anything to anybody or vice-versa. Just that there is no need to give up on the present condition of the forum. Exciting things still happen at the forum and they can happen towards bitcoin product development too. All we need is a bit more interest in exploring the L2 solutions.
(You probably have to work hard to get your profile displayed by default without negative feedback). 
