> The only thing that worked long-term where limited scoped* forums with 100% human moderation that basically had one single rule: "this is my forum and I appoint moderators that enforce my vision".
So basically Reddit before they declared war on their volunteer mod teams.
Reddit was a cesspool long before their recent war on mods. In fact, the war on mods wasn't a bad thing, since SO many mods were such horrible people; there's countless stories of people being perma-banned for just asking a mod a question (which is something that happened to me once too).
The only social media I've ever seen that was really nice was back in the USENET days, or later some things like Yahoo groups, where there was a small group/forum dedicated to a very niche topic, with a decent moderator who wasn't on a power trip, and a fairly small group of subscribers. Of course, this was no guarantee of quality of lack of drama, but it's the best I've ever seen. The larger and more general the forum, the worse it's likely to be.
So basically Reddit before they declared war on their volunteer mod teams.