Of all the forums I've tried (I am on many of those very famous forums; have an account and/or have used it at some time or the other) I find MetaFilter the best - minus the interface[1]. In terms of quality and atmosphere of the forum.
Answers and participation is of high quality. It's hardly ever overwhelming. Maybe because of relatively less number of (paying/one-time) users.
Doing away with threading somehow kills the flow of discussion and keeping it makes it ugly and difficult to present, especially when they nest quite deep.
All the forums mentioned in the post just seem to be using different templates(visual) for the same system and none of them is doing sth new that is not already existing in other systems.
Answers and participation is of high quality. It's hardly ever overwhelming. Maybe because of relatively less number of (paying/one-time) users.
Doing away with threading somehow kills the flow of discussion and keeping it makes it ugly and difficult to present, especially when they nest quite deep.
All the forums mentioned in the post just seem to be using different templates(visual) for the same system and none of them is doing sth new that is not already existing in other systems.
[1] It's just too ugly and unintuitive.