I'm probably giving away my age by saying that I am quite comfortable with the current forum layout. Of course there could be some minor changes, but in the main it is holding up well.
I'd say the issue isn't with the layout, but rather functionality. If one was able to choose (or create) his own layout for the forum, everyone could be satisfied. Technically, SMF 1.X supports custom themes but, as with many other features, it's been disabled for security reasons (possibly unsafe implementation or at least a massive attack vector).
Another potential for Bitcoin is the provision of rewards for content producers. Brave and Steemit are trying this. Where could one discuss this in relation to Bitcoin in the current forum? The Lightning network is another important development for Bitcoin - should we have a Lightning board?
AFAIK any Bitcoin-related tech discussion should reside in "Development & Technical Discussion". As for the Lightning Network, unless discussions on it are pushing down every other type of topic in one of the forum's boards, it's unlikely it'll get it's own section. In most cases, boards are only created when a subset of a board's topics pushes down the rest of them.
Then it will stop being bitcointalk, at least for me.
There is this thing about relicts, they tend to gain value with time. I think it will happen here also.
A relic that gains value over time is a static object. A community is a living organism. If a community website doesn't adapt to the ever changing landscape of both the internet and society at large, it'll suffer a slow and painful death. I'm not saying Bitcointalk should do a 180 and change it's entire identity, but feature-full (as in by today's standards), easy to use and stable software as well as fostering a community are probably 2 of the few objectively beneficial things to strive for in an online forum.
I think bitcoin needs this place to stay a little archaic, out of time, mostly because it needs backstory. Some sort of a background.
It's not a backstory if it's still the same as it used to be. A backstory is a tale of progression and change - how an object / person / event / platform evolved, not how it remained the same for eternity.
In modern era conservative nature seems old-fashioned, pase even but nevertheless rock solid. Most stable constructions are built on bedrock, not sand and that's why this place is still alive, thriving in fact.
This place is alive because it was the first and only official Bitcoin forum. In an alternate universe, if this forum wasn't the first one and thus in competition with all the other copycats, it probably wouldn't fare as well.
There also this; don't fix, what is not broken; rule, so in my mind this place is bitcoin
the other side of the same coin, in some sense.
People just don't seem to realise this.
As someone who moderates the place as well as an active user of the forum, there are many, many broken things about the forum. There's a reason I barely venture outside Meta if I just want to chill and read some interesting content. Or maybe that's just me.
For quantity (just like r/bitcoin), Bitcoin Talk UI/UX should evolve just like Reddit.
For quality, spam should be eradicated and less strict moderation.
But i don't see both option will happen anytime soon.
Reddit's threaded structure tends to water down discussions, splitting them up into numerous sub-discussions, as well as making it harder for the reader to easily read through a topic. It's upvote / downvote based comment and topic sorting and filtering essentially introduces censorship by democracy - unpopular opinions get pushed down and filtered out, while regurgitated popular opinions consistently get pushed to the top. I'm not particularly fond of Reddit's social media like site design either. As for quality:
1. less strict moderation
2. spam eradicated
3. not spending massive amounts of money and effort on numerous staff, machine learning based detection systems, etc.
Pick 2
Quality and usefulness (which compete with freedom) are things that are always on my mind, but I'm not bothered by popularity. Most people will always use the big, popular platforms, and bitcointalk.org will never compete with them. Trying to compete with them would require totally changing how the site works, not just tweaking around the edges and adding a fresh coat of paint. (Our next-gen Epochtalk software works fundamentally the same way as the current software, just better.) I tend to agree with poptok1's post.
The point is not to compete with social media but be the best you can be in the category you're already competing in - online forums. Epochtalk's development is coming along at a painfully slow pace (see:
code frequency; similar patterns in other repositories) with no end in sight for many onlookers. There's a clear systematic issue of incentivized spam, especially in the altcoin sections. Both of these situations indicate that there's a lack of manpower in tackling these issues, be it through oversight, coming up with intelligent and thought out solutions or preparing and applying detailed implementation plans. I'm not saying there are easy solutions (that keep in mind the core values of the Bitcointalk community), but there are many really smart people around the world who, when given sufficient compensation for their work and time, can sooner or later work out the way to properly mitigate these issues.
approximate tl;dr of the entire post: keep core values at heart and improve within the framework they've set up.
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next time I'll add some role playing actions with Barney (How I Met Your Mother) 
then add all the member of the Pussy Cults.
