What about Yahoo! Answers? Asking for a friend.
Compare to the products mentioned in the blog post, most if which I hadn't even heard of. Why would Yahoo continue to run a message board product when they also have the much more popular Yahoo Groups?
"We also encourage you to ask and answer questions on Yahoo! Answers, and discuss issues in the comments section on Yahoo! News."
However, it looks like the avatar images that everyone is used to will disappear, since Yahoo is getting rid of them generally.
Citation for the downvoters: http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20110910190628AA...
I do think there is plenty of room to make it much much better. It looks the same for as long as I can remember.