Well, I had a feeling we were running out of road. FWIW, here's my two cents on a way forward:
Separate the news site from the community site(s). Have a CMS-based news site that deals with the newsposting, the RPG database, etc, but have the forum (or fora) as a separate concern. That way, the newsposting site (let's say continuing as the RPGWatch domain) would be extremely simple and stress-free to manage - it would focus only on that aspect, run by a small steering group, the admins and newsposters. No worrying about what people are posting in forums for which you're responsible, moderation debates, spam, etc. People wouldn't sign up for accounts there, but they could submit news, articles, reviews and so on, for consideration.
Then leave the creation and management of the discussion and community that flows from the news site to others. There might be one forum, or many, and a Discord group, or many, and so on. The news site team could participate in whichever one they preferred.
I remember once, one of the Codex guys said the Watch was for news, the Codex was for discussion, and it had always been that way. There might be some disagreement on that, but I think there is the germ of an idea there - that the Codex could be seen as a discussion forum using the Watch as a news feed. I'm wondering whether we should embrace that concept. Let the news and curation folks do what they're good at, with far fewer headaches, and let the rest of us worry about setting up one or many solutions for community continuity and discussions.
Mentioning the Codex, there is a clear advantage to almost-anything-goes moderation - it's an awful lot less to worry or argue about when you dont give a toss. The disadvantage is that approximately 50% of most threads are filled by a type that comes across to me as a troubled 12 year-old trying to curry favour with his bullying brother and their racist dad. And, personally, I find that like spam or white noise.
The problem with a bit more of a moderated environment, is that if it's a monolith over a whole community, there's always going to be tensions between people's views on how that should be done. So, maybe let's not have just one community - have the news site as a discrete entity, and let people set up whatever communities they wish flowing from that. Anyone can start their own Discord or subreddit with the push of a button. It's trivial to then have an RSS feed or somesuch from the news site, and create automatic new posts in your forum or chat room for each newsbit. Tell the world they're welcome to do so, but just chip in on the running costs now and then. The news site would be the part that requires some technical folks (where they could work in peace on clear objectives, with little to worry about).
If anyone likes the suggestion, I have ideas on what software solutions might be used.