From Sharon's clarification, it appears that there might actually be two different questions in play here. One, what kind of forums (if any) should the JREF have in the future, and two, what to do with these forums?
Everybody's been talking about the second question (for obvious reasons), but maybe it would help to consider the first as well.
The reason they're two different questions is that if, as appears to be the case, JREF now wants forums that are focused upon a particular image and/or message, and whose image and message it can control and fine-tune as it wishes, then these forums aren't those forums. An example of that kind of forum would be the "new improved" Richard Dawkins "forums."
The problem is, there's no evidence that can be done with real open public forums moderated by volunteers. Forums don't generate consistent well-crafted narratives. They generate bits and pieces of such narrative, surrounded by noise.
There are two ways to generate consistent narrative. One is the authorial method: carefully create only the material that fits. That requires very tight control over what everyone contributes. I've seen it done successfully in forums sufficiently small to be controlled by a single person with a mission and a focus. That person is able to reply individually to every post as needed to keep all the active correspondents on message. The Forge, a gaming forum, was one example. When people say about any message board, "That place is a cult," there's a good chance that it's such an example.
The authorial approach can also be done using blogs: the blog entries set the topics and posts only on each topic are welcome, and are also heavily moderated as well. Such comments only add marginally to the content; most readers are there for the blog entries, unless they want to argue in which case you have to curtail them considerably to stay on message. The words "author" and "authoritarian" have the same root for a reason.
The other approach is the editorial method. You find a source of noise with bits and pieces of the narratives you want embedded in it, and you pick out the bits and pieces you want and arrange them to present your narrative. An example is professional sports: the events of most games taken as a whole are noisy and mostly random and generally don't make good stories, but sportswriters (and later, screenwriters etc.) pick out the interesting threads of events, put them together omitting the unnecessary noise, and turn them into stories. Reality TV shows do the same thing.
Both these methods take a lot of work. In fact, not coincidentally I believe, they're both about the same amount of work.
Now, these JREF forums have always had the "Forum Spotlight" thingie, that puts selected threads up for view in a special collection. That's a step in the direction of an editorial approach, but it needs more work to make it work. First, whole threads is too big a chunk to be enough editorial control. Interesting threads tend to be long, and what you most likely want to exhibit is a run of a few posts that get the ideas across. Second, the Forum Spotlight was not more publicly accessible and only marginally more prominent than the forum itself, which is like having your sales office be a roped off section in the middle of the factory floor. Third, there was no editorial heading for spotlighted items, saying "Here's what this thread is about and why it's interesting." Someone has to write that.
But the fact remains that, with that considerable additional ongoing editorial work, raw public forum content could be used as a resource for presenting JREF's point of view in a controlled way. That possibility stacks up well against alternatives such as getting people to write a bunch of blogs and moderate their comment threads.
But you can't "crowdsource" your own message. No form of forum will have that result.
