Well, of course it depends if a forum is targeted to nordic, italian, south american (sorry for generalization), usa (big generalization here), academics, gaming, right, left… but I would like to say there is few universal rules:
- too much decoration and gimmicks are just too much
- Spam problems should solve only if there is need for that
- Users must get those rights they need right away, so no playing with trustlevels
- Kick bad apples right away out from forums, no warnings
- Gamification is just another gimmick
And part of those is not using entropy settings.