- In general splitting communities is bad. It happens anyway, due to wanting to focus on a smaller area, or people having problems with the site owner, or people wanting less moderation. Wanting more moderation, not so common, but here you are. I think I was better off with BGG having all the Dominion traffic, but then there are benefits to having dedicated forums. Currently Dominion is mostly discussed here, then on reddit, then at BGG, then at the German forums. Those pretty much make sense; this site is dedicated, reddit talks about everything, BGG covers all games, and the German forums are in German. It would be better to combine the non-German traffic but there will always be people on BGG who prefer staying there and ditto for reddit.
- It's easy to start your own forums. Zetaboards will give you free ones (with ads) (
http://www.zetaboards.com/). You can be up and running so fast. You can make them invite-only if you want just certain people there, or let anyone join. You can moderate however you want and see what happens.
- It's also easy to start a blog. There people can comment on the blog posts. WanderingWinder has a blog with some Dominion articles, probably you've seen it (
http://wanderingwindergames.blogspot.com/). Your content could be mostly video-based.
- I think a big thing about the level of moderation is the level of non-post content. If you have tons of non-post content (e.g. front page articles) then people will keep coming to the site for that stuff, despite heavy moderation. When all of the content is posts, they want to say what they want to say.
- If there's a [serious] thread then for sure there will be a parallel "This thread is for replying to Adam's thread without having your post deleted" thread. Really, if you make a separate heavily moderated site that non-members can read, there will be "This thread is for replying to Adam's forums." So I mean, there's something to come to terms with. It seems easy to ignore but it will be there.
- I don't know if you've ever had your posts deleted. It doesn't make people change their wicked ways; it enrages them, and makes them go somewhere else, where their posts won't be deleted. Your rage at posts you didn't want, it's the same for them when they want their post and don't get it. So deleting posts is anti-community, except of course in the case of people trying to provoke the mods, e.g. with shock images. Me personally, I am not interested in having my posts deleted.
- I don't know if f.ds can get ignore lists, but that's a great approach for many people. You hide the Ozles and Witherweavers and never know what you're missing. Except when other people quote them, although their are plug-ins to handle even that. Actually yeah maybe you can do ignore lists with a plug-in if the forum software won't do it. Ignore lists, that is the solution.
- People who make joke posts tend to be popular. It's great to have a WanderingWinder ranking all the cards and writing a paragraph about each; it's also great for a WitherWeaver to crack wise. Even when the hit rate is low. Not that I am praising making tired jokes, man. I might block some of those people, if there were ignore lists. The first three letters are the same, we get it.