>I discussed it with my older users and we tried different strategies, but maybe 1/30 new <30yo users is worth it. I had to ban some of them just because they posted too much noise.
I didn't mention the fact that I was a Admin/Mod in my earlier post, but my biggest issue was fending off being spammed by bots. We had tons of traffic to the site/forum without the need of SEO as we were always on top of the search engines, and member registration was good but like you we had limited 'good' user activity, and the few that was good was hard to filter through at times that I made post approval a thing until we just disbanded the forum as the newsletter and conferences/workshops/irregularly scheduled weekly calls had more impact on the core business.
Ultimately, I think this is a struggle that will only be mitigated by a migration to a new form of the Internet, one in which we are not encumbered by the ad driven, panopticon business model, and shallow click-bait sensationalism to keep it running.
It became clear to me sometime after 2010-11 that Internet culture had entered into an obvious decline to some of the more critical parts of it that made it worth spending time on, I often relate it to how the early monolithic structures of Egypt were far superior to the later versions as it declined: something very critical was lost along the way.
Can it be recovered, with a great deal of sacrifice and hardwork I'm sure it can as HN is a constant reminder that many of those very same people who valued that spirit of the early days entered the Industry and went on be a part to build this system and are equally as disgusted and tired of this perverse abomination, that no amount of viral 4k streaming videos of an influencer showing off on holiday that 'breaks the Internet' was worth what was lost along the way.