What this 4chan downtime, move to 8chan, and return has taught me, is that a great deal of people just want to shitpost and bait (and dump porn). I don't remember if it was always like this, but it's eye opening now to see just how much of it there is. Perhaps it's also because I'm older now as well, and recognize it for what it is.
People want a board like 4/v/ to do these things, and the formula just doesn't work elsewhere. Any other image board I visited, if they had an active enough populace, that had a /v/ board (or any hobby board for that matter) - it had actual discussion of the topic at hand, and next to no shitposting.
8chan can never be a true 4chan replacement in this regard, because 8/v/ operates more like 4vg with higher thread bump limits and more pages. Plus it has a board owner that sinks or deletes any
low effort posting. People just want to shitpost and have a small amount of board pages so the thread sinks off in 30 mins and they can start another one. So for 8/v/ to work properly, it would need to change substantially. The fact any board created here automatically defaults to a 1000 post bump limit and 29 pages hurts a lot of boards outside of the very fast general focused ones. And even then, over ten days, some of these fast (refugee) boards didn't even fill out their 29 pages before 4chan reopened, since the thread bump limit is so high at 1000 (for example, 8/trash/ is currently at 14 pages).
On 8/b/, eventually several porn threads were moved to a newly made board by one of those in charge,
>>>/ausch/, a board like 4chans /trash/. What 4channers failed to grasp time and time again was that there were entire boards dedicated to their thing they wanted to post, they didn't have to stay crowded as a general in 8/b/ or 8/trash/. Tell them this, and they start crying and screaming that the boards they are being directed to are dead, meanwhile also going off on "its a general random/off topic board so I can post this here". So they stay where they are and post like they do on 4chan. Herein lies the ugly truth of it all - people want fast replies to their threads (shitposting/bait), and want to be able to socialize (while dumping porn). Because 4chan was allowed to run rampant in this fashion for so long, this is what the masses are used to. This is what they want, this is what they prefer. To them it doesn't matter if 8chan has better features such as a higher image size limit or text limit - if they can't post *exactly the same way as the did on 4chan*, they don't want to use it.
Ultimately, this is why no alt chan will truly succeed, because to become popular, you have to allow people who acted as they did on 4chan to act as they do on any alt chan. And if the owners of an alt chan don't want that, people won't stick around. That's already very evident in the slow decline in traffic here now, in all the refugee boards, as people slink back to their posting habits (and Stockholm syndrome) on 4chan.
I also realize the concept of an image board that can infinitely expand has its drawbacks. You can make a board for anything, that's good in theory, but the problem comes from there being too much fracturing of communities and not enough population to warrant so many boards. A board should only be made if there is enough people to post in it and for it to be active. There are a few 4chan generals that this could apply to, however them coming here with their own board isolates them from their 4chan home, and why venture to another site despite having so much more freedom and better features, when you can just stay on 4chan and chill in your general while shitposting everywhere else?
Like the AI generals I saw on 8/b/ and 8/trash/ do much better on 8chan due to higher image size limit and being able to post more than one image per post. These threads are busy so the thread higher bump limit works great. But many of them moved back to 4chan - with a lower image size limit, one image per post, and a thread that hits the image limit long before the post limit. Plus the threads are so busy on 4chan /b/ that they only last an hour or two and then a new one is made (usually because of hitting image limit so fast), so it's rather hard to keep track of certain genners. It can get chaotic. Despite that, this is what they want, because they get to chat socially while dumping porn and there are more people giving them attention. If there are no people, some genners don't want to post their gens.
And of course, with 8chan, comes the old adage of "Well, if you don't like it, make your own board". Knowing damn well the new board won't succeed since everyone is already posting in the other board (unless the board owner becomes an extreme tyrant). In this case, they'll simply just go back to 4chan, because that's where all the action (shitposting and porn dumping) is.
Then of course, you have other issues, like there being no fully functional and dedicated 3rd party archive sites for 8chan like Desu/b4k, that people like their 4chanX that 8chan lacks (I saw one being worked on though), 8chan lacks a few site features that makes navigation and thread managing a breeze on 4chan, and the server and captcha troubles that have plagued 8chan since the hack.
tl;dr - 4chan will remain shitty in both software and moderation forever, because they know people will come crawling back, because there is no true alternative. People would rather use nothing or go to other sites that are not image boards, instead of using 8chan or any alt chan, because they can't act and post like they did on 4chan.