At some point in the hopefully not to distant future a project I'm working on will require some forum software. This stage is still in the conceptual phase and I'm hoping to clear up a few things and get some input.

Design wise, it will be basic, "retro" even, designed around early BBS systems. It will run on a "darknet" server, probably on the tor network - because I've never set up a tor server. No it has nothing to do with drugs. It won't be a forum you can just sign up for, as mentioned it's part of bigger project. Although I'm considering invites once a certain threshold has been meet (ie: xposts/ykarma" or some combination).

From a community standpoint, I hope to provoke thoughtful, intellectual discussions and while it will be primarily tech focused there won't be any rules regarding topics, except the hard coded ones. Which is where I'm having "problems".

What I need is something like: A user may only create x(I'm thinking 2 but up to 5) threads, across all categories in a day.

A user may only post in a thread once every 12 hours. (Borrowed from early days of dial up bbs systems,things wasn't as "instant" back then).

Once a user has posted, it will be editable for up to 15 minutes after that it will be locked. No revisions possible and for the sake on continuity in a thread you won't be able to delete it.

Now I haven't played with any forum software for ~8 years, so I don't actually know what's out there at the moment but from what I remember old forum software used to be pretty heavy and have limited add on capabilities. I openly admit I haven't done any googling. So if you have any recommendations as a starting point it will be extremely helpful.

As an aside, I figure this is the perfect time to ask a generalized tech crowd their opinions. What do you think? Would you use a forum designed like the above?