I like the Forum venue. I'm also a member of several other forums, most are good, one is poorly managed and is mediocre at best. It has been my experience that forums don't do well if left unmoderated. New members really should need approval or the spiders will creep in and "join" and you end up with a mess of porn posts.
I moderate on a couple forums, both of which require approval before new members can post and are kept under control with the occasional jerk getting removed. It will be interesting to see hwo this one works out. IMO, it's already halfway there by running VBulletin for software.