Australian BB's

After the decline of Usenet (ask your grandparents) but before the rise of blogs, the major outlet for net posters was the Bulletin Board. (Now I know that online bulletin boards have been around since the 70's, and still exist to this day, but I'm framing a reference)
Over the last decade there have been a steady evolution in Australian Chess BB's. The first popular chess BB in Australia was set up by then ACF webmaster and secretary Paul Broekhuyse. It was a bit of a free for all, without registration requirements, and no moderation. It was a simple messaging board without the bells and whistles of more sophisticated BB software. Realising its shortcomings Paul asked me to manage the creation of the Australian Chess Federation BB.
This was closer to what a real bulletin board was, with registration required to post, although non-members could still read messages. Again moderation was almost non-existent, but the BB survived for a while.
Nonetheless the legal ramifications of running a bulletin board were always in the background and it was decided that this was a (potential) problem that the ACF didn't need. So www.chesschat.org was created. This was not legally connected to the ACF, although there is an overlap between Chesschat moderators and ACF office bearers. Moderation on this board was much heavier than the previous boards, resulting in conflicts between the moderators and some posters. The disaffected posters formed their own BB, the Australian Chess Club Forum, ostensibly as a haven of freedom from the chesschat "autocracy".
Finally, a new BB has just been started, www.ozchess.com.au. This BB is an attempt to combine the attitude of the ACCF with the same software platform as www.chesschat.org, giving the "best" of both worlds.
For those who are interested in joining these BB's here is my take on each of them, with an emphasis on the traps to watch out for (NB I am not endorsing any of these BB's)

www.chesschat.org
This is the most popular of the 3 boards, and the longest lasting. Nonetheless with age comes a degree of stagnation and although there are chess related posts, most chess related "debates" are fairly short or suffer from thread-drift. It seems most of the old hands are more interested in debating "non-chess" topics, making the BB more of a social club than an information resource. In terms of moderation you are fine as long as you don't do anything wrong. Unfortunately "right v wrong" is often determined not so much by what was said but who said it. This leads to an undercurrent of nastiness by the "in crowd", who remind me of 6th graders picking on the smaller children. But if you're in with the clique then you're fine. (Disclaimer: I stopped posting to this board after the moderators began editing and deleting my posts without my permission.)

http://p067.ezboard.com/baustralianchessclub
The Australian Chess Club Forum
Formed by dissaffected/banned members of chesschat.org ACCF is attempting to be the things it claims that chesschat is not. However the difficult joining process, and the impression of others that this is just a chesschat bashing forum has kept the membership small. While the signal to noise ratio is better than chesschat, the debates are quite sporadic and the posting volume is low. And while there are claims that the board is a haven for freedom etc etc I sense that it wants to be just like its big brother chesschat, only with different people in charge. Kind of like 5th graders waiting until next year, when they get to flush some heads down the toilet.

http://www.ozchess.com.au/
The new kid on the block. As it is only just up and running it is too early to say what this board will be like. Nonetheless I am cynical enough to believe it won't be any different from the other two, with social norms established by the behaviour of it's moderators. Probably the real metric of its success will be its membership size in say a month or two.