I'd have to say that in the short time I've been here I've found the talk forum counterproductive. Far too many threads that end up in name calling and flame wars.

My own forum has over 2.5M posts, 30K+ members, etc. but has been around a lot longer than here, so we're not as busy in terms of daily post traffic. We have many rules around personal attacks, post content, "pointless threads", etc. I've 2 Admins, 7 "SuperMods", and around 50 moderators who all look after a minimum of 2 sections each. We use vBulletin's inbuilt infraction system to warn users of inappropriate behaviour and automatically ban people who rack up enough warning points.

I think Andrew's ideas are well worth taking further.

Grant.