I am researching customer support discussion board vendors for a large
and fast-growing product. Below is a list of preliminary requirements
that I have:
- Features: permission-based system (users can gain/lose priveleges),
user ranking/reputations, post ratings, user banning (ip, email,
username), moderation (add/edit/delete) or report bad post feature,
bad language filter, reporting (most viewed posts, user reports,
etc.).
- Scalability: Must be able to support millions of users.
- Implementation: Preferably not overly-complex or too time/resource consuming.
- Design: Must be flexible so that it can be uniquely branded.

I am looking for a two part answer. First, please include a list of
the top 6 vendors to consider, along with the following details for
each vendor:
1) Name of the company, name of their discussion board product & URL.
2) What are the standout features? What differentiates this product?
3) Is the product scalable for millions of users?
4) How is it implemented? Do they provide engineers to support the
roll-out? How long does the typical implementation take? How many
resources does it require?
5) Design: Is there a high degree of flexibility in designing the UI?
6) Cons: What are the drawbacks to using this product? Are there any
common problems?
7) Examples: Do any major corporations use this product? If so, what
are some examples of current implementations?

Secondly, please also provide some details about which vendor (if any)
was used to develop the following customer support forums:

1) Tivo: http://forums.tivo.com/pe/index.jsp
2) Dell: http://forums.us.dell.com/supportforums
3) Ebay: http://pages.ebay.com/community/boards/index.html
4) Apple: http://discussions.info.apple.com/
5) Motley Fool: http://boards.fool.com/Index.aspx

This is also time sensitive, so a response by Thursday, 7/22 would be
much appreciated. Please let me know if you have any questions.
Thanks!