Yet, perhaps the new adults of this era, are not as keen on this as we were at that age.

The other suggestion I read is to just keep the forum up, and don't do a thing anymore. Led it run as-is, because a lot of people still need it, and it would not cost any time, just a little money.
Of course, that could be done, and to be frank, is already the case for some time, as no substantial changes in terms of the website have been made, apart from the tools blog, and the Let's MultiEx series. We've also gone back to an open forum, and limited rules set.
There IS a lot of talent here, and excellent people, that could do anything if they wanted to. That's where the defined projects could come in, something tangible to put your teeth in and gain fame and glory for all eternity (that's quite a long time, so w00t).
There should be talented people in there as well to lead this forum, I would hope. If not, then after 12 years going strong (steady for years now), I doubt it can sustain itself without guidance.
To clean the population, we can do what we did years ago: purge the forum. We deleted all users that had 0 posts. Just to get the core community a bit more clear. We warned everyone in advance, with a number of reminders, to post at least once in a designated thread. So their post count would at least not be 0, and their account would not be deleted. They could just say:"HI" and it would be okay.