The reason the d-list never attracted this kind of criticism is because of the flat structure. That every post is always seen by every viewer of the d-list acts as a strong moderation to post topics which affect BM as a whole and not any individual continent, realm or other subset.
Subforums are too effective at filtering and hiding posts. This results in navel gazing conclaves. Continent subforums are especially poisonous, as half of the people there will support anything you say and the other half you hate the guts of, depending which side of the war you are on.
I suggest resolving the forum into a minimalist flat structure. The only subforums would be General Discussion and Development. The parts other than BM (M&F WI etc) don't change obviously.
I am not going to say there are never times where for instance the Lurian and D'haran players both all are on the same side when talking about issues regarding between their realms, but that is more of an issue of perspective between the two sides causing them to disagree, not cliqueyness. It also didn't happen often. Lastly, I don't see how removing the organization helps at all as that just makes it harder for those interested in certain islands to find what they are looking for without actually solving anything IMO.
I'm not sure about flattening the forum entirely, but I do think you're on to something here. If forum users are getting a bit too cliquey posting almost solely on Atamara or Dwilight boards etc. perhaps there should be some sort of merger of the locals boards? Perhaps collapse them into Stable Islands (Atamara, Colonies, East Continent, Far East) and Testing Islands (Beluaterra, Dwilight) and you will hopefully start to see a wider mix of posters and fewer people put-off from participating in discussions.
I don't see why people only posting on one island is bad, why should they have to participate on islands they don't want to on? I myself post on Atamara, Beluterra, FEI, and Dwilight. I have actually posted on Beluterra longer than FEI and probably just as long as I have on Dwilight despite never playing on Beluterra, but I don't see how whether I just post on Dwilight or all the boards I currently post on matters.
