Not to mention using a forum for bug reporting really sucks. There are tons of actual[1] bug reporting[2] systems[3] that they could use that would do a much better job of cataloging and tracking bugs than a simple forum. I would be way more inclined to do testing on the PBE if they had a real bug tracking solution.
I like the idea of a festival but I'm really getting concerned at this point that he's trying to bite off more than he can chew. He should reduce his load by doing a few things:
Even a basic bugzilla instance could pretty easily be deployed and used for this.
Depends on the level of computing skill by the people trying to deploy/configure it though.
There are many software packages that are way better for logging and debugging and for software development that are intended for that purpose. Reddit (as a concept) would be better, but there are even better tools where they can easily link and assign tasks.
And they are often free, yet intended for big projects and at a very professional level. Two I have experience with (as a user) are https://www.bugzilla.org/ and https://www.redmine.org/
And yes, they can limit the amount that users will see. And there will be others, depending on their specific needs. But the least you should have is that the user can see what he or she posted.
I do not know what they use, but I think it is horrible. I can not even easily find my own postings, so I have no easy way to follow up on what I have posted.
I hope they have something better on their end to follow up. It makes me not want to use the site and that is not something you want.
And "something similar" is extremely vague. An other thing to consider would be your skill level. And what is the end goal. So the chances are that even if you find exactly what they use, it might be changed and probably will not be best suited for you.
There also is a huge difference in how it looks and how you might get it. It could be that they used the default, but it can also be that they completely changed how it looked.
As you want to host, look at e.g. Wordpress. They have a lot of plug-ins and many hosting companies have a simple 1 click install for it. They also have an active community. They also have links to other programs that you might want to use for whatever it is you want to do.
If it is just bug tracking, you can use e.g. bugzilla or redmine
That's a good suggestion with thunderbird, good thinking. As for bug tracking programs Bugzilla is a well recommended program with the bonus being that it is free. I'm not sure if it requires servers or not, though, as I've always been on the 'bug reporting' side and not ever had to set up the system up before.