I agree, reddit gets most of their traffic from the engagement surrounding the latest shitposts and low-effort memes. (Or just genuine community content if you prefer)

Months old posts are hardly relevant to large scale user engagement and it's unlikely that the one user trying to solve a problem by visiting a years old thread is going to have much of an impact.

If people are going to move away from the site in a healthy manner, they need to realise for themselves that it's time to move on. Better to have a bunch of hopeful and curious people looking for new opportunities rather than bitter and resentful users which are going to vent their frustration elsewhere.