Topic: Let's make bitcointalk great again. (Read 721 times)

: what do you think needs to happen for our forum to become popular again?
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Personally I think you've raised a thought-provoking question! Despite the fact tht am just barely a few weeks old in this forum.  It's great to see your dedication to the forum and willingness to explore ways to revitalize its popularity.However, considering some these strategies can aswell go a long way in revitalizing the forum....

1.Content quality and relevance: Encourage users to create high-quality, informative, and engaging posts, focusing on valuable insights and discussions.

2.Community engagement: Foster a sense of community by promoting user interactions, recognizing contributors, and hosting events or contests.

3.Modernization and user experience: Update the forum's design and functionality to make it more user-friendly, mobile-friendly, and visually appealing

4Guest blogging and collaborations: Invite experts and influencers to share their insights, and collaborate with other crypto-related platforms.

5.Clear guidelines and moderation:Establish and enforce clear rules and guidelines to maintain a positive and constructive environment

I think by implementing these strategy, the forum can potentially attract new users nd regain its popularity. What do you think? Do you have any specific ideas or suggestions?

Domain authority of Bitcointalk is high and this is the reason every project likes a backlink from the forum. The discussions help their sites to rank up in Google.

The administrator is not interested in money. The forum already have so much money that we can buy an island. The forum is popular for project marketing team and the forum members.

Bitcoin forum is a non-commercial one and it has no need to advertise any where. Advertisement nowadays is very costly and even Bitcoin forum has budget for operations, paying staffs for their moderation jobs, it does not mean the forum need to pick pocket money for advertisement on the Internet.

With very different structure than social media, what do you expect that advertisement will help Bitcoin forum gain massive exposure and new users?

Incompatibility between Bitcoin forum and other social media platforms is big minus for any paid advertisement program.

That solution can work but I have reservations about it, I feel like if the incentive to join is only about money, I'd say that it will also attract people that doesn't have anything to contribute here. Plus, there's nothing that can be done in terms of increasing the incentives because the forum isn't that renowned around the Internet so it's really difficult to justify the money that's pumped on signature campaigns, we're already lucky to still have some signature campaigns here advertising here, it's not a matter of incentives to joining I think, this is just my opinion but I think that what we need is more visibility of the forum to the surface of the Internet, it's not enough that we're at the top search when searching for "Bitcoin Forum", we need to put in some ads on other websites, I think that's what we lack here but I'm not trying to say that's the only solution, maybe there are some and maybe this solution that I'm getting isn't even good with the staff and administrator.

Then you should create a business proposal for this forum, by explaining how to monetize it and what need to do to achieve it. Because you need to cooperate with the administrators, as they're the one who have a big impact and could make "this business" become successful.

But, I don't see theymos as someone who want to make this forum become business or he might be not interested with business, because he removed forum ads just because the forum already have enough money to fund the server and moderators. I'm not saying he's wrong though.

I would consider making Bitcointalk the best place to do business. We all see how many communication platforms are gradually gravitating towards greater convenience for business. For example, You Tube or Instagram would hardly have become so popular if it were not for the possibility of monetizing their content. Bitcointalk has a unique content monetization model. We just started talking about it, but for some reason we continue to be ashamed of it. Why is this so? This is not clear to me. Even bounty managers constantly remind you that the forum should be a hobby for you. But I think that we will face a gradual transformation in a completely different direction.

There has actually been some decline in the activeness of some prominent forum members since the ban of mixers in the forum; some of them left the forum entirely, while others are not active as they used to be.

The possible solution is that the current users should improvise by representing the prominent members that left by posting some quality posts and starting to give quality contributions, just as the past prominent members used to do, and we should make sure we are active and maintain the forum's reputation.

There is a section for gaming in the forum on the gambling board. You can also choose any betting platform that is being advertised in the forum to place your bet; most of them have Bitcoin payment methods for both deposit and withdrawal.

I don't feel like this forum has lost its popularity, at least since I was active from 2018 until now. Fluctuations in user activity can be said to be normal considering that this is a discussion forum that never binds any of its users. They may come and go and return whenever they want, but those who are interested in certain things will stay and continue their activities.

Most of the surviving users certainly have their own missions and plans. Maybe because of the business world or other reasons that support his efforts to make money. It doesn't have to be a signature campaign, of course others have their own reasons, including project development and whatever.

True, there are new members joining every day but problem is that not many of them actually stay on the forum for longer period of time and then add those old users who left or aren't as active as before and you get the current situation.

Afterall, you don't have to belive me or anyone else that says that there is a decline when you can simply head over to ninjastic.space and compare total number of posts in May 2024 with let's say May 202 and May 2022 and you will see what's the trend.  

Make it more open to discuss, share ideas, be able to criticize others no matter what the fu*k is their rank. Be yourself instead of being an ass sucker with the goal to rank high and become a DT member.

To many members use the forum to earn money instead of being selfless. Too many groupings. Too many power seekers looking for opportunity to show their power. Too many stalkers  stalking you to insult you either with a neutral tag or when they get a chance to give a red tag. The system is not bad but there are too many members who plans to use the system in their own favour and that is making things harder for low rank members and newbies, in some cases even high rank members who are independent and don't give a fu*k of any group.

It's a forum, not a corporate office where interns will be ragged by senior staffs. Stop the ragging culture, stalking culture, the forum will be a better place.

I don’t think we have any decline in the forum’s popularity because new members are joining the forum every day. Take a look at the beginner board, you will see that there are new members joining the forum everyday, this means people are knowing the forum everyday.
I will believe you that some users left the forum for good, while some users stop being active as they used to be just because of the end of mixer campaigns, but that did not stop them from sharing their contributions to the forum because most of them has already left so many important threads to remember in the various sections of the forum.

The messengers you are saying will never gain the traffic the forum will have because the forum is universal and have various sections to interact including using several languages in local bords.

There should be an entire board dedicated to gaming.

Some of the first people to mine bitcoin in history are gamers on their old-school gaming laptops back in the day.

Why is there no gaming board?

It's a massive part of internet culture, and bitcoin is money of the internet.

Many bitcoiners I know today are gamers and play games and use discord and all that.

Biggest changes are years ago, in 2018 January and September with merit system launch and demotion on Junior members without 1 earned merit, respectively.

• Merit & new rank requirements
• Enhanced newbie restrictions & requirements

There are some more changes like Trust, Feedback, DT system and community-led developments with contributions from PowerGlove and his SMF patches. Bitcointalk's important historic changes has some information for you.

People have many reasons to leave like they are rich and want to enjoy their healthy lives without connection to Internet and the forum, or they got diseases, needed cure, passed away, or they felt boring with this forum and abandoned.

Oppositely there ware people joined recently who are future of the forum. I remember that o_e_l_e_o used to be a newbie like me in 2018 but after some years, he is recognized as one of forum legends with his deep technical knowledge. Members like him might appear in future, stay positively thinking but I know such gifted people don't appear too often.

The rise of instant messaging services?  Say what, now?  I will grant you that discussion forums have lost a lot of popularity over the years, but that's been because of social media sites like Facebook, Instagram, and all those other privacy-destroying, soul-sucking entities and not what I think you're referring to.  Jesus, I remember when IM became popular back in the AOL days, which was what, nearly 30 years ago?

What's keeping this forum "great" is primarily the existence of signature campaigns and whatever other ways to earn money there are, and the popularity of bitcoin in a distant second place.  What'd make bitcointalk great again is if all the morons who came here just to wear some advertising in their signature but can barely put together a sentence, much less write 140 characters (or whatever the minimum amount is for whatever campaign) of coherent thought, would just go the fuck away and never return.

But I've been railing against those degenerates since I registered, and nothing's changed much.  At least we've got the merit system that keeps account farmers in check.  Yay for that.

I believe despite of the negative feedback observed by OP, I still think that the forum today has gained more positive developments than it was before. So I can’t tell exactly that the forum is losing already its value and is less great today, although many have left but we still have a lot of reputable and experienced members to count on. And when it comes to the current contents of the posts these days, I can still see they are still relevant to what’s happening in the universe these days, except for some newbies who are raising irrelevant and low quality topics which I think they can still find ways to improve in the future.

I do think as well that bitcointalk gets even more popular these days knowing bitcoin has become a hot topic in the social media. However, the sad part is that this forum has been full of spam posts because it’s obvious that newbies are mostly the thread openers these days, and creating some topics that are irrelevant to the forum. I’m not saying that newbies are no longer helpful in maintaining the good reputation of the forum, but if they will continue to make spam and off topic posts, I’m sure the forum will no longer attract new members that might somehow become the assets of the forum in the near future.

Bitcointalk is as popular as before because there are some searches about Bitcoin, mining, and cryptocurrency that I will do on Google, and the results I get always point me to this forum.The only thing that has changed as per the last topic I read is that the number of posts on the forum has reduced from what it used to be in the past; some old, experienced members have left too; and some old signature campaigns have ended. An example is the CM campaign, and the best change that they just recently discontinued their campaign. If the existing members continue to improve in quality topics and discussions and if some old members continue spam bursting, then the forum will just be fine. 

Based on the information I found, and I only checked for Facebook, businesses can advertise online casinos and online gambling in countries where such advertisement is legal. The advertised casinos probably need to be legit as well. But, they need to request permission to do so from Facebook and its owner company Meta. So, while it's allowed, Facebook and its owner need to approve the ads. My guess is that other social media platforms have similar rules.

There is no doubt that nature does its part, just as the price of BTC affects how low or high the pay rates in sig campaigns will be. In other words, many of us will eventually disappear from the forum, and I wonder if we will be replaced by some new people or AI bot farms that will chase senseless bounty campaigns and try to see who can produce more posts in the shortest possible time.

Already now the number of posts created by AI has a high share on the forum, and if nothing else the forum was really better before this technology existed - at least we knew that we were dealing with pure human stupidity and not with people who are so stupid that they think that AI will make them smart.

I don't know why social media platforms in Western countries don't allow casinos to promote on their platforms. Because in those countries, gambling industry is legal in most of nations. If their governments allow this industry by law, why they can not promote on social media.

Through the forum, I know that in Italy, gambling is not allowed or kind of restriction partially. In England, latest changes in policy don't allow gambling companies to advertise their brands in Premier League. Will it change in wider scale globally, it's really unknown future.

Are reasons of companies to advertise in Bitcoin forum because they are not allowed to do this on social media?
Not actually because I know many brands are advertise both on Bitcoin forum and on social media.

I doubt that in the future, more companies will advertise here. Unless you are saying that more casinos will advertise here. Promotion is easier and reaches more targeted audiences in the social media than the forums. Casinos are promoting here because they are not allowed to promote in many social media platforms. The kind of projects that will come here to promote apart from the casinos should be related to cryptocurrency, such as exchanges, mixers etc. Mixers are gone from the forum and I do not expect any other signature campaign boom in the future unless mixers will return in the future.

Let's keep being here with passion and preserve the legacies of Satoshi Nakamato.

Personally, I agree with you, as I have yet to see such a friendly problem-solving platform. Here, if you need any help with kip to currency, experts come and present their opinions beautifully. Bitcointalk is not just about crypto. It's a hub of technological advancement. In my view, it's a one-stop solution for all system-related issues. Bitcoin's journey to the top is a testament to its continuous progress. Anyone who wants to know something can ask questions openly. Everyone presents and explains beautifully. Everyone is a hero on this forum, so there is no problem. This is a very interesting thing.

This is just the truth that some of us are shying away from. You can not separate human from resources (money) and people will always prefer where there is more money. We can not realize this until the admins decide to ban signature campaigns, the forum will turn to ghost mode with less relevance. Majority of people will leave if that happens. Even people who are genuinely here to contribute and impact others with their knowledge are doing so because of the reward attached to it.

If these incentives are not more, people will become discourage to interact here and the activities will tremendously reduce. Compare a teacher who is getting paid for teaching and the one who is teaching for free, we don't need to be told which one will take the job seriously. Although, I don't blame the admins for their decisions since it was a preventive measure against a greater damage in the future, however, it is good to consider the impact of every decision too. The forum will become valueless even if it remains but no people to engage with one another.

It's normal to experience downfall at some point even in our real lives and we bounce back, I believe the forum will also bounce back to it peak soonest. People are living are people are also coming in, it's a natural phenomenon as every can not be here forever.

Well, lets hope for the best. But things are changing, the crypto market and regulations are changing.

This easy btc we get here in services/reviews/sig may reduce even more in the future, or even disappear...

I think this place will always have technical discussions (just like stackoverflow or reddit), even if activity drops dramatically.

Is it just me or do I see more and more "old members" who think that the forum used to be better before than today? Better in what exactly? More spam, campaigns run by bots, plagiarism everywhere and ranking without merits...

Given that the OP was registered in 2017, I assume that he means that period and the years after that - but the only thing that I miss a bit is the price of BTC, which was several times lower than today, which means that sig campaigns paid more in BTC. Some things are simply the past and you have to come to terms with that - maybe we should be happy that the forum still exists as it is.

BBS -> fora -> social media -> ?? (could be Metaverse)

Few people will understand...

The problem is people nowadays don’t even bother to create a topic for the big news anymore. I’ve been observing this behavior for a very long time.

The biggest one was when binance disabled monero withdrawals and nobody said a word about it for hours till I created a topic about it. Back in the day people were creating multiple topics about big news in every damn subforum.

Now,  nobody cares.

I don't believe that the forum is experiencing a decline in activity at all because even if some users are leaving the forum maybe as a result that there are few signatures campaign that are reputable, productive discussions are still going on in the forum and newbies are also registering almost on daily basis so if there is nothing important going on in the forum that means there would have been a decline in newbies registering but instead it is still on the increase. If we look beyond just signatures campaign and become more productive in the forum, signature campaign payments will just be like a bonus for us when we are making quality discussions in the forum.

This forum is well moderated unlike social media platforms that everyone has the freedom to do and post whatever content they like so people of great intellectuals are more interested in platforms that are moderated and this forum have been one of the best platforms for crypto and other socio-economic discussions.

That's not true, IMO. All these social media are one big "Bitcoin Discussion" board. Reddit and Twitter are filled with bareless speculation, and maybe like 10% "good quality". Nostr is pretty dead last time I visited.

A very cool place for Bitcoin-related discussions is stacker.news. It's like Bitcointalk before it introduced signature campaigns. Everyone's without signatures, or avatars. Just talk and have fun. 

Messengers being the downfall of forums is not something I dont completely agree with.

The people who want to learn about bitcoin, talk and discuss about it with like-minded people will find a second home here, is what I believe in. However the forum could do some polishing on its UI to be able to engage the next generation, even though the status quo might be preferred by most of the people visiting at present, like 2FA was a welcome addition.

Like I said in another thread, if you call something is becoming bad, it will. It is your responsibility to make it good again. Get your local community strengthened and engage in its discussions to actually some newbie who is wondering in the world of crypto scams into the right path.

Of course they are different and bitcointalk is much better for a serious and quality conversations, but how else you think bitcointalk could regain its popularity?

I've been on forums for more than 20 yrars (iirc it was 2001) and situation has never been worse, which of course coincides with people having more options now than for example ~15 years ago which was imho golden forum era.

Nothing.

Nothing will change the current structure of the world Internet.

Forums, as one of the stages in the formation of the Internet, have survived only as a vestige of that old era. The world (technology) does not stand still and therefore messengers now dominate. Of course, some of the forums still exist, but forums will never become as popular as before.

I’m not saying that (advantages and disadvantages) forums are good or bad, it just so happens that now this is not the most widespread type of platform and it will no longer be possible to redirect users from instant messengers. People got used to the new type (shell) of products and adapted to the changes. There is no way back.

You propose the same thing, so that everyone switches from cars to horses. It doesn't work that way.

If you want to make the bitcointalk great again, but you need to change the format to a completely different, updated one, but it will no longer be the same forum that we are all used to.

Your points are valid because you see people complaining in this forum about long posts. Once you put up a long post it is common to see members advising you to summarise your post to enable fast and easy reading. I don't also blame people sometimes for preferring short posts. People don't have much time because they are overworking themselves to survive. These days, if you don't work hard, you might not be able to survive, so people want to learn faster with smart reading. That's why I am trying my best to be financially stable to enable me to exit the rat race. My desire is to retire early and put more time into things that give me satisfaction, not just money.

Social media like Reddit, Twitter and Nostr have absorbed most of the bitcoin-related discussion, and that of other crypto in general, but that doesn't mean that Bitcointalk is useless. In my opinion it is a hybrid between a mailing list and typical social media postings, where you can still have in-depth discussions about things, but you are not going to see a whole lot of memes and trolling until you go somewhere like that Wall Observer thread.

Don't you mean social media instead of instant messengers?

I don't want people to have instant access to my attention, I don't want memes, and I don't want videos. Bitcointalk is fine the way it is.

I'm confused: your title wants to make the forum "great", your post wants to make it "popular". Considering the level of social media, I don't think those two words go together.

I still fined the forum to have improved over the years given that, come the population as we’ve got now, it’s sure to have its dose of troubles too. Though, it doesn’t mean the forum isn’t great anymore, it still is. We have users confined in a niche that, you need to be well grounded to participate ot willing to learn else, you just wouldn’t fit in. I say this with particular reference to the technical discussion board.

While the early adopters was curious, interested about the technology, discussed it with each other and hoped to see it transformed to something great, they still do exists on the forum and a few new users still number in this capacity while, a lot of others just want to make turn overs after turn overs, milking the technology and giving nothing back. Not even some literal piece to improve on what’s available.
Instead, you find users looking out for the next AI to help their course!
Good thing we’ve got users dedicated to tracking these, report and neg tag as it applies. It’s been effective and the fight continues but, this is what happens when you have increased participation and a rapid development in technology.

All that doesn’t mean the forum isn’t great. Rules are still very effective and it’s toxic to law breakers still.

The title topic sounds like Trump's slogan about America.

Now is the time for messengers and short messages. What I noticed was that people stopped reading and communicating with each other. Instead, in instant messengers, speech is reduced and words are replaced by emoticons. People have forgotten how to write and read anything longer than two lines. Of course, this is sad to see, but all we can do for the forum is tell our loved ones about it, or maybe it will be possible to captivate them with questions about Bitcoin.
 And while the number of companies is minimal, only those interested in them will probably remain. It's amazing how many nicknames are memorable, and you always see the same people. Any new name is surprising.

Let me assume on the fact that I recently came into the bitcointalk forum and probably may have missed out previous happenings which may have been assumed that the the forum was little declined from gaining more or maintaining its popularity as though said Op.
But up to the era I became familiar with the forum, I learnt that it's has been one of an ancient existing platform which I've come across on the internet but unknowingly to me that I never knew the valuable potential not until I was recommended due to the fact that I had interest on Investing on bitcoin and exploit in the crypto sphere.
To me the forum is best regarded and commendable by the way it's today, let it remain on the low without being architects to hyping or turning into one of the social medias where people wouldn't be guided of morales and the highily terms and conditions of the forum wellbeing.
Maybe such designated submissive should be of the AltCoins and the MemeCoins that're based on hyping and the childish speculations just to attract investors. Behold, this is primarily bitcointalk platform while others are attached. The public related orientation of bitcoin enthusiaste relating to the public is that you shouldn't convince anyone to invest on bitcoin but let them decide for themselves. Definitely the forum stands as equivalent to such regards of bitcoin reputability.
My thought though.

No need to change about the forum, but it’s most likely the forum members should improve theirselves so that the forum will remain its significance on educating and spreading the right information and insights. If other people will see this, they will no longer resort into finding other forums but stick to bitcointalk.

Bitcointalk is still definitely the most popular when google, as much as it can be the highly significant one when moderators don’t tolerate spams and fake information all throughout the forum.

The decline in popularity does not apply only to this forum (like all other forums), but it is a trend for the website industry in general. There are more and more projects, businesses... that have a website only for information and basically rely on hosted services beyond that.
Various social media, YouTube, GitHub etc...are taking over the dominance, also most services without a mobile app seem to not exist.

Unfortunately, signature campaigns lead the forum's trends, so if you think that the forum has become a thing, this means that campaign managers need more effort.
The worst thing is the scarcity of non-gambling campaigns, but nevertheless, spending time without paid posts is fun.

Have you ever thought of how impossible it'd be to moderate spam and unwanted post if the forum was as free as what social medias look like? Lemme make a little specificity on it; Facebook has a very effective word filter for a lot of derogatory words. If you ever go against their community standards, a ban is issued out immediately.. in some cases, people could maneuver with their words, adding signs and full stops just to convey their exact thoughts... If that happens in Bitcointalk, with time, it'd become one of the most terrible places to visit.

It's the least thing on my expectation list... As long as the value of Bitcoin increases, it'll always commensurate their desired pay rate... Everything can be recycled, maybe that's just what we gotta realize soon enough.

I don't think we should compare forums with social media platforms or instant messaging apps because they have different purposes altogether, and besides, those who were into forums from the beginning would never turn their backs on them only because there are instant messaging apps available now, similarly, those who were always into those things where there is more user-friendliness and convenience for using the platforms such as easy exchange of information, sending and receiving pictures and videos would barely be interested in forums in the first place because they never were into such things.

I have always been fond of forums, be it this one or any other, because I have always known and believed that forums are the epitome of knowledge. The knowledge that you might not find anywhere in the world wide web might be found in a forum somewhere because people share their experiences in such places and there is nothing more valuable than an experience shared, it gives you a clear idea of what you are looking for.

So, the popularity of this forum or others haven't dropped because of the advent in the social messaging platforms but it's just that most people aren't completely aware of what we have in here. It could be a lack of marketing, maybe.

Bitcointalk will remain as main sources for influencers on Facebook, Twitter especially Twitter when they need to find something about Bitcoin history, the founder, milestones in Bitcoin adoption and developments. I have seen many times influencers, centralized exchanges dig into the forum and find such information.

Help and get help educationally in Bitcointalk forum is classic, it's hard to find it in other online platforms, I agree with you Pmalek.

It's sad that the forum already lost o_e_l_e_o months ago. I hope o_e_l_e_o is still fine and enjoys happy life with his family.

Far in the past, the forum lost Andreas Antonopoulos and Jameson Lopp. The second person still logged in the forum to announce his fix on Bitcoin Confirmation Risk Calculator tool.

When it comes to getting help and assistance in solving specific problems, the knowledge roaming around on Bitcointalk and among its members isn't something you will find on Facebook, Twitter, and other social media platforms. Bitcointalk was and remains #1 in that aspect. I think Bitcoin StackExchange takes the second spot in terms of quality posts.

I guess Telegram is what you're mentioning the instant messaging app but it's serves completely different purposes and most often telegram communities of crypto doesn't involve any discussions they just share news which is likely be one time bump and dump scheme.

Bitcointalk is still great in terms of quality.

If you want to see more numbers then revoke merit system then you will see account farmers will take down the quality by bombarding thousands of posts everyday, so great=quality not quantity.

There were auto-join sig camps in 2017 and the most famous one was bitm-xer’s camp. It was awesome we were getting paid in flat btc rate and btc was mooning. People were drowning in money. Now most good campaigns pay in btc again but they pay us its usd equivalent (50-100 usd), merit system also slowed things down a lot.

2017 was a spamfest but people made lots of and lots of money during that time. It was awesome. I don’t think we’ll experience something like that ever again in the future

Firstly Op let me start by spotting out the fact that I don't believe this forum has lost its level of popularity in any way. In fact it is actually safe to say that it has even gained more popularity over the course of the recent bull run and other things like conjestions that also occured. Saying that this forum has reduced in popularity to me simply means you are indirectly spotting out the fact that the forum traffic has dropped to some certain extent.

The most that I can agree to is that over the course of a few years we have lost some legends on the forum like the likes of o_e_l_e_o and light warrior. The fact is things will still go on as normal and over time users will come up to assume the spots of those legends.

We would gain nothing here if the population was here and didn't make a quality impact. It's better to be on average and maintain a serene forum environment where readers can get the actual information they need. A library is best being quiet. When a library is populated and noise erupts due to a high range of unserious readers, there is only two ways to handle such thing. Is either the serious readers leaves there for the unserious ones or the management places a strict rule that will expell unseriousness in the library, and maintain quietness thereby reducing the number of people who visits there.

Technically this is a self interest board. More like an online Bitcoin library.You can't find a place like this on any social media. Fine, on there you'd be able to see niches on Bitcoin, but the contents are not arranged like it is here, and many of them don't rank on search engines. Bitcoin talk is great except for the fact that members feel that great users are reducing in number. However, it takes time to learn a lot of a new technology like Bitcoin. As the forum is filled with users who are barely 5 years downwards since their membership here.

I understand that most people stopped getting an easy usage of the forum due to the restrictions on low quality posts and spamming. Lots of new members left the forum as most of their posts got reported and deleted for some good reason. The forum would have been in a serious mess if all sort of unmoderated posts were left floating around causing misinformation and low rate of learning. Nothing is wrong with the forum. We are growing.

All social media don't even need to disappear first before Bitcointalk can regain its glory; both are there to serve different purposes, and aside from that, social media can't replace Bitcointalk; at least the ones that I'm seeing now can't replace Bitcointalk based on how this forum operates.

There is a lot of spam and scam going on those social media sites, with a lot of fake information flying here, and it's not like here, where members dedicate their time to eradicate such.
 
This forum creates a wider learning environment, and its design for that purpose compares to how social media is designed, where they are mainly focused on what they could get from users traffic and the rest of them.

If the goal of boosting popularity is to compete with social media apps to communicate then this is almost impossible to achieve since forum is far too outdated to compete with that no matter what campaign we use to boost popularity. I bet all members here has social media account that is frequently being use than the forum in terms of communication.

In regard with popularity against other forum. Bitcointalk is still the top forum when it comes to crypto discussion forum. I read bunch of discussion on reddit and other crypto forum but all of them doesn’t have much substantial input compared to the knowledge being shared by knowledgeable forum member here.

Bitcointalk is still the number 1 forum for crypto discussion.

Let me also add that the invention of Artificial intelligence tools has also changed the medium from which the younger generation obtains information. These young people are not patient enough to search for information from traditional forums. They can just get the knowledge they desire cheaply by using chatbots. Young people are also more interested in learning easily through videos rather than writing. I don't know much about the reduction in the number of interesting topics, but it might be an indication that old-quality posters that are leaving the forum are not replaced accordingly.

I believe the reduction in the number of active members here in the forum can be traced back to the ban on mixers and other little personal decisions for members who feel like leaving, starting with the ban on the first mixer, which was seized by the three later governments, which was one of the highest-paying campaigns. After it was banned, some of the participants who I see wearing their signatures are no longer active.
 
Another reason, which I can also say contributes to the reduction of activities on the forum, aside from the lack of campaign, could also be a lack of interesting topics, which I have seen a lot of members talk about. Aside from the campaign earnings, there are those who are here based on the kind of topic of interest they always come across, and if such a topic is no longer here, then they will have to leave the forum.

All other socoal media and means of communciation should disappear in order for bitcointalk to regain his older glory, and since that of course won't, happen its best to accept the reality and gradual decline. All we can hope for is that decline will be slow so we can enjoy in bitcointalk for many years to come (which I think we will).

I don't think there is much that can be done. Life runs its course. With time, people become bored and want a change. The older forum members who made this forum what it is are slowly leaving, but they aren't being replaced with the same quality in the younger folks.

Trying to make the forum important again is like trying to make tape recorders popular again. People don't want tapes and cassettes anymore. Their interests lie elsewhere.
One thing the admins could do is not make new rule changes that will affect forum activity. Looking at it from an activity point of view only, banning mixers was a bad decision. Those discussions that would have taken place on Bitcointalk are now happening elsewhere. Signature campaigns are important whether we like it or not. More changes like that could have similar results. 

Thank you for sharing the same views and adding more substance to my position. It actually feel so strange when posts about the declined popularity of the forum pops up every now as if the forum is ending any time soon. The more we make the forum all about signature campaign, even though this is also important, the more we kill the fun of being here. The reduction in traffic is understandable and completely natural because most of the products banned in this forum were among the major contributor to the forum traffic. Everything cannot automatically return to normal but will require some time for the traffic to come back when more projects find here worthy of their marketing. We can also see that within this same period, many new companies, mostly in the casino businesses, have also joined the forum and more will still come.

As far as cryptocurrency is concerned, the forum is outstanding, the bounty section is bubbling and new members are join the forum at an alarming rate even though there also a few people retiring from the forum too.

I have not been in the forum for a long time but I have always heard from older members that the population has reduced. From my few years, I have also observed that a few well-grounded members have also left the forum due to some reasons. Apart from that, the only issue that I have observed is a reduction in the number of campaigns. There is always a time for everything in life and one can do nothing about such situations.

When I saw the title Let's Make Bitcointalk Great Again, I assumed that OP wanted to come up with some opinion that would attract more members to the forum. Bitcointalk is still the number one platform when it comes to Bitcoin discussions and I think it will maintain the position for a long time. But we cannot also deny the fact younger people are now more interested in getting information from other sources. We all know that one of the ways to bring more people to the forum is when there are more avenues to get rewarded.

If to make the forum popular again, it needs to turn to be a social media platform, it's ton of tasks to do and I can not imagine how I use the forum like X. I barely use X to be honest.

Frankly when I joined the forum 7 years ago, I did not feel comfortable with forum infrastructure and text discussions but now I love it and this style. If I have to use it like X or Facebook, I would feel I lose something.

These spam activities from bounty hunters are visualized with charts there
Time Series on monthly statistics of forum (new users, new topics, new posts)

I believe the Bitcointalk forum remains popular today. Maybe many old accounts have left the forum for whatever reason we don't know. but there will always be new members registering.
I don't clearly understand the level of popularity you mean. but if you refer to @Solosanz's reply, perhaps most of those who disappeared from the forum no longer earn money from the forum. so they leave temporarily or indefinitely.

In terms of wider popularity, I think it will come when Bitcoin is finally used as an alternative legal means of payment throughout the world in transactions for goods or services. Certainly, the popularity of forums that focus on discussing Bitcoin over a very long time will increase in popularity.

This forum is still very popular, and ranking very high in any Google search.

Just search for technical questions and topics, bitcointalk is always among the first results

What OP wants is just more money from signature campaigns.. which are a privilege,  not a metric of the success of the forum.

That of great, I precisely joined in 2017 and what I remember is that it was good times for spammers and scammers. I would say that the best time was until not long ago, since CM fell and there were several mixers who had signature campaigns on the forum. As we already had the merit system for several years by then, there was a mix of traffic, good contributions and a democratization in good campaign payments (before there was a huge difference between what CM paid and what the rest paid).

I don't think there is anything we can do. The mixers are not coming back, the forums are becoming less and less popular, and the only way that would be to attract a lot of good paying advertisers I see as unlikely. Add to that the fact that casinos, which are the big advertisers now, are in a kind of legal vacuum that I don't think will last for many years.

The key is money.

I heard that in 2017-2018 was the best years since many people can earn a lot money with minimal effort, they only need to tweet, re-post, translating using google translator, spamming 1-2 liner(s) in this forum etc.

After most bounties turns scam, most people leave the forum, many users shift to signature campaigns and the forum still renting the ads banner.

Theymos decide to stop the ads banner, now starting this year the forum ban mixer promotions which make the traffic going down.

How to make Bitcointalk become popular again? enlarge and expand the incentives.

Personally I do not think that the popularity of this forum has diminished so much, what I see is just a reduction in the number of companies coming to do marketing in the forum following the ban of mixers. Even though I still believe that mixers were in line with the vision of Satoshi, it is unfortunate that the powers that be consider it a threat to their control of global finance. It is expected that the ban of mixers will definitely affect the forum but I have the confidence that in coming years, the forum would have evolved and completely return to the high traffic platform it used to be.

In summary, I don't think there's nothing anybody can do to change the natural process the forum is passing through. In due time, more companies will see the importance of the forum and will surely consider the forum for their marketing, this will in turn bring more participants here.

I've been on this forum for quite a long time and I have no plans to leave. We have all witnessed a rather sad phenomenon: the decline in the popularity of forums and the rise in popularity of instant messengers. Indeed, messengers are convenient in many ways: you exchange instant messages, you have very few restrictions on publications, you can actively use memes and pictures, as well as videos. You can post many messages in one chat or channel and the moderator will not correct you. However, pay attention to the positive aspects of forums: here the information is well structured and systematized. There is a concept of a constructive post here, which is not found in instant messengers. In messengers, all messages fly into an endless feed, from where it is very difficult to pull them out.
 I believe that crypto forums are ideal for running an anonymous, or more precisely, pseudonymous business. You open the door to your personal life exactly as much as you want. This is unthinkable in the ordinary world. Thus, crypto forums in general and the bitcointalk forum in particular are of significant value. In this regard, I would like to ask a question: what do you think needs to happen for our forum to become popular again?