Again, about marketing bitcoin. This forum is not focused on marketing bitcoin. To the best of my knowledge, Satoshi used here to discuss with early developers and here was seen as an interactive group to keep the project going. But it has evolved to something huge, yet this forum hasn't invested much in publicity. If you talk about marketing, social media like twitter does it better.
Then you could say promotion of new projects with bounty campaigns it would make much sense.
About this forum making or establishing its early adopters. That is true, I have seen many early adopters who are grateful to this forum and could confidently say that they made it from here.