Steve:

I figure on going to whichever one gets together the most old members, providing that that forum takes the appropriate action

BT1 should apologize to the victims of unfair banning and take measures to assure that it never happens again, and also put together some sort of policy requiring whoever is running the show or the appropriate moderator to respond o an email within 48 hours.

and/or

BT2 should get sufficient and sufficiently trained moderators on board, with the same rules as BT1 so far as the use of moderators is concerned. Let the other differences stand. While things seem to have stabilized on BT2, there have been some highly intemperate and hurtful posts on some of the forums. A forum for sharing experiences, questions and concerns needs above all to be a safe place, where one can share openly and even awkwardly without having their words rammed down their throats.

The job description of a moderator should be to moderate, not to judge. Telling people to cool it or face judgement; calming down arguments; generally trying to keep things on a civil tone and moving along.

Maybe a single moderator should not be able to ban; have banning be possible only when two moderators agree on the action. This would reduce bannings, almost eliminate the unfair bannings, and would take a lot of heat off of the moderators.

Also, when things get out of control and a thread is deleted or someone is banned, a tracer should be left so that everyone else knows what happened. If this is supposed to be a community, then we should know why our friends and neighbors have disappeared.