About Workload : hire more people. Debian forums has more registration of new members in a single day second only to ubuntu.So More members on the roll.Call out for hiring!.( Offcourse its going to be volunteers. No one will be paid, I know.) There are 47 mods in ubuntu. We have only handful of people right now to moderate this great distro.
Initially I hated the rules in arch linux forums. I felt it too arrogant. But honestly , I saw more cultured and wise people in Arch forums. People do their homework, before posting a thread for support. On the contrary Debian says 'RTFM' type of talk is not allowed. But as far I have seen no one has been or shall be ridiculed in Arch linux forums when you show the willingness to learn. Newbies most likely be harassed only when they demand for help rather than trying to learn. That attitude comes to people , I don't know maybe after using Ubuntu.The number of active threads per day in Arch is higher than fedora and Debian inspite of no ranting and very less off-topic and too much schooling. But debian is a more polished distro, so less breakages on the whole, as the need for support is comparatively less. But forums has to be a place where people can get tech support and not a lobby for hang-out and rant.
I don't get which one you are reffering to. But better give me an example. Becoz the FreeBSD and Arch linux are more strict in their ways they run the forums with more rules, but their threads are very informative.Also that type of board assumes the participants aren't adults, but idiots... the more you hold people's hands the stupider they get and the more stupid people join... those capable of independent though (hint: they tend to be the more useful members) leave... the end result is a forum full of copy and paste artists and trolls - and because there are more rules, users are far more likely to break them... it's a vicious cycle.
I honestly think Debian has lot of potential than any other linux distros out there. But making this forum a better place would definitely would bring more people using this distro. I would be happy to volunteer !