It would need some form of voting, distributed moderating support (including UI in clients), html posting/images and advertising to be a real alternative for mo

It would need some form of voting, distributed moderating support (including UI in clients), html posting/images and advertising to be a real alternative for most forums though. NNTP is much better than web forums but web allowed people to add features ('innovate' shudder) much faster than a 'set standard/get clients to update' cycle can.