For what it's worth, anyone who liked this post would probably really like this book:
http://www.amazon.com/Building-Successful-Online-Communities...
http://www.amazon.com/Building-Successful-Online-Communities...
Curated by Theresa Neilsen Hayden, who at one time modded comments at BoingBoing. As a former forum mod myself, I can attest that there are LOTs of great crowd-hacking insights here.