Crap forums. Are forums really hard to design? You would think so by looking around. The New York Times and Salon both have great sites but shite forum interfaces (perhaps because they both use the WebX system). Utne Cafe is just horrible (and requires registration before you can even read the posts). Feed’s new design of Loop claims to be “cutting edge”. With that crazy orange/blue/purple/lavender navigation thingy at the top I’m not sure about that, but they seem to be alone in actually presenting you with a posting form upon arrival in a topic – a nice touch.
Photo.net seems too simple, but it’s so usable. One of the big challenges seems to be understanding the hierarchy of categories (conferences -> topics -> posts). Photo.net solves it with simple breadcrumbs.
Our beloved Blogger does pretty well with their forums. Although it requires a lot of page views to get to the messages, everything is clear and easy to find.