All I can say is: I hate forums too, for the same reasons.

Forget RSS; how about an IMAP or NNTP interface to the forums, so I can use an ordinary email or news client? -- JoshTriplett

This is something I've thought about before; wouldn't a Web interface to newsgroups work better than a newsgroup interface to websites? --bma

You may be interested in Vanilla. This is a relatively recent forum engine, that tends to generate clean html, and natively creates RSS feeds on the fly for each forum and topics. --mms