I hope this won’t be perceived as a shameless plug, since feels very relevant to the discussion. We at PeerBoard are trying to solve this problem with creating a robust discussion platform that can also be whitelabeled and used from any domain or even custom website. It’s available for free for all public interest based communities that are ok living on our domain. Trying to get the best from Reddit et al while fixing the worst.

Edit: typo. Also, no ads without admin consent of course!