>if /b/tards can mend their ways
I saw it happen briefly a couple of times in recent years - once when a mod went "rogue" and made a ton of BIG TEXT stickies with stuff like "OH TEH NOES, PORN IS BANNED!!!1" in them (and deleted every porn thread for a day or so), and then again when longcat died. There might have been some others but I forgot what they were

It never lasted long though - there's just too many people on there who want to post in the bajillion recurring porn/nudes threads, bad actors making the board shitty on purpose, dunces who can't perceive a joke, and mods that don't want to risk reviving the various moderation and legal headaches that /b/tards used to frequently cause

Not to mention that almost everyone from "back in the day" is now 30-40 years old, and doesn't have the same time or desires as they had in their teens - at best they only returns on special occasions like the ones I mentioned