Try this or this to see what a "commercially available and user adaptable" database program does.
This format works for me, and (obviously) for most users here. If you can do better, develope it and sell it.
I'm sure there are LOTS of sites looking for a better, more user-friendly and intuitive forum format.
I don't know what you do for a living but I build websites for a living. Usability in particular is a critical part of what I do and one thing I like about FR is weappreciate expertise in an area to lend credibility to what one is saying. I'm not tops in my field (not nationally known) but I'm good at what I do. That being said - I've looked at both your links and the first one at Freedominion.com is actually not bad once you get into the forum itself. Even still it lacks some features that make the forum itself more useable. Threaded views for example. It appears to only allow 'flattened' views. But their intial presentation is not fully intuitive but still - hardly horrible. However plenty of room for improvement. The second one was certainly more confusing and not implemented well. But the good news for them is their problem is solveable if they have the willingness and resources to do so.
Beyond that - there are solutions which already exist that can be customized or even used right out of box to support a site such as this. FR's largest problem is it's popularity - I would imagine that the biggest difficulty they face is providing sufficient bandwidth and server space/processing. So no need for me to go build something.
I do agree that people are making it work - I guess I'm just offering suggestions that might make it work better. No harm in that.