It's not technically dead... people have just stopped spriting and the few that do never submit their sprites... like people just assume I'll browse their topics for them and add their sprite; idfk.
And yeah, unfortunately for their creators, people don't want to use low quality, incomplete sprites. That's why quality control was implemented. If you post your sprite in this topic knowing it is incomplete, I assume you'll never complete it.
If anything, this topic is a good place for people to submit their sprites and get proper credit for them. But like I said, hardly anyone bothers doing so.