When it was difficult or expensive to run a forum, and someone had to pay the bills, it incentivised the owner to have an opinion about what the forum should be

When it was difficult or expensive to run a forum, and someone had to pay the bills, it incentivised the owner to have an opinion about what the forum should be and appoint mods to enforce it. It also incentivised the participants to play nice within those rules because splitting off and starting a rival forum was kinda expensive and a pain in the arse. By making things cheaper, and paid for by some big company somewhere, we've lost that.