One board that I visit (that some of you might have seen me mention before) is the Home Theater Forum. It's membership numbers are huge--somewhere around 45,000 members, I believe. Literally, there will be more members just online there at three in the morning than there are total at this site. And, just due to the inherent nature of the subject matter, the crowd there is roughly the same age as it is here--a few teenagers, and some members in their forties and fifties. But mostly, everybody there are in their twenties and thirties, just like here.
What's interesting, is that there's absolutely no language filter. None. If I want to go over there and call George Lucas a mofo for not putting "the films" out on DVD, I can, and nobody would blink an eye. Now, they do have one rule, which is not to use any profanity in a title of a new thread, but other than that, you can pretty much say what you want (as long as it's not a blatant attack toward another member).
Even more interesting, though, is that really, never does anyone abuse it. In nearly four years of being a member over there, I can't remember a single incident of anyone really freaking out, and cussing up a storm about someone or something. I think one of the reasons for that, is that the staff there is really vigilant about potential "trouble situations", and I think everybody there realizes that if they freak out on somebody, they're gone. And I think that's one thing that this site has in common with places like the HTF--that the mods take a pro-active stance, and aren't passive like they are over at R-------m.
And I can understand the concern that some people may have--you let one thing go, what's next? But I really think that with the right combination of mature members and good moderation, you're not going to see people take advantage of the small freedoms they're allowed to have.