Yep. Looks officially gone, and I'm gonna have to take credit for killing it. I think I've posted part of this story before, but never the whole thing. Get ready for a mediocre and not very interesting ride!
When they shut it down years back, it was because there were 2-3 Tennessee fans who had completely taken over adding new topics daily. The boards were still quite busy then (nothing compared to the days before gator chatter, but still had 4-5 dozen new posts/replies a day).
There were these two Tenn fans I remember, orange54 I think and lizard something (maybe?), who were constantly posting these new topics. I'm okay with other fans coming in, but when 2 are coming in, day after day, just to spread their toxic behavior and post stuff about the gators sucking and Tennessee being upcoming (as laughable then as it has been for the last 15 years), I felt like something needed to be done. I ended up emailing a couple of editors and other emails listed on the GSUN website about it because half of the topics were about TENN... on a gator board.
I also sent private messages to about 3-4 other board members, showing them the email I wrote and encouraging them to do the same. At least a couple said they would.
My email basically said- come look at the board and see how much of it is actually about gator sports, and how many topics are just Tennessee fans being unprovoked dbags who aren't there to discuss anything at all, but only to troll. Please do something about this.
Well 2-3 days later I tried to hop on, and it was gone. Eventually a message popped up about how they were going to try to "improve" the board before bringing it back. Dumbasses just had to ban like 2 accounts. I bet they didn't even know how to do it or have the ability to, so they just shut it down. Well I waited a few days, then weeks, and maybe even months. I don't remember how long it was shut down. When it went back up, I tried hanging around for a week or two but the place was clearly dead, only having maybe 1 topic and 4-5 replies on average a day. I had already made the full switch to gator chatter, something I had been considering doing for a while anyway. (I think I had another username here at the time, I didn't come back for 6-8 months of so because I was so busy with work, made a new name when I came back cause I hated the old one but that's a huge digression). I was on the gatorsports board since the early 2000s if I remember correctly, and had been lurking here for a while before the other board got temporarily shut down.
Really the main poster I miss (making fun of) is Alvin. I know why he got banned here. And I probably would have banned him too. But my name is a direct reference to that (almost beloved) idiot.
Also RIP to Lawrence of Florida on the gatorsports board who everyone was convinced was a FSU fan posing as a Florida fan. I miss that troll.
And that is the very long and boring story of how I shut the message board down for a while, and now, permanently. I deserve at least half off a lifetime membership for killing that board I think, right? (Kidding).