Honestly, I will be completely honest, it is somewhat tiring to have to weave through the not necessarily "spam" posts, but just posts with lack of effort. I don't think it's necessarily an issue with signature campaigns, but the downfall definitely started there. When I first joined BitcoinTalk it was a source of intellectual conversations - and frankly - business.
Welcome back! I don't recognize your username, but you probably post in sections I don't regularly visit.
You're absolutely right that the decline in quality began with the inception of signature campaigns. I wasn't a member when they came about, but I've done enough reading through very old threads and it's very obvious that there's a cause-effect relationship there, though I
think things have improved since the merit system started. Campaigns and bounties certainly still drive members to post crap they wouldn't normally do if there weren't a financial incentive, but account farming has been cut down dramatically and there aren't as many brand new accounts all over the place posting one-liners.
Something that is not listed in the poll and has occurred to me in 2018, which is disappointment about Bitcoin or in lack of interest in general. After 2018's market crash, I was so disappointed that I abandoned Bitcoin and the forum altogether. It took me over 3 years to login and start posting again. I rejoined the forum in 2021 and have been active ever since.
Huh. Bitcoin's price never affected my affection for this forum, which is like an intersectional infectionism in my hare-brained noggin, if you know what I'm saying (which you probably don't). That's kind of strange when I think about it, because when I registered I wasn't completely convinced bitcoin was here to stay. Now that there's no doubt in my mind about that, it doesn't matter what the market does from month-to-month, as I'm convinced that bad times are just masking an overall upward trend.
