I agree there should maybe be a seperate template system for novice users, mainly because some people just don't do this computer stuff a lot.
In your case it looks as if these people would have trouble with ANY message board system. If they didn't know what FAQ meant then they would need a lot of things simplified for them to use forums.
So I think that would be a good thing to work on, is templates for forums for the people who don't use things like these very often. Especially in internal environments and such where they really only use the forums for business and such. This would help keep the learning curve to a minimum yet still retain all the features.
