The Depths of the Sea has been closed

[Celtkin]

For some time now, we have been concerned about the deterioration of the post quality in the Depths. The forum was filled with false accusations about prominent NFL players and other activity for which we could be held liable.

As a website, we have an obligation to take reasonable steps to prevent illegal or libelous activities at Finheaven. Having a unmoderated forum that was filled with libelous posts after post was anything but a reasonable move on our part. Today, with the publication fake publication of an AP article, we decided to close the Depths indefinitely.

The move was for the good of Finheaven. All it would have taken was one lawsuit by the AP or by an offended player to completely bankrupt Finheaven. That price and that possibility was too great of a risk to take just to satisfy the 30 or so regular posters in the Depths.

Even if we prevailed in a lawsuit, the cost to defend ourselves would mean the end of the site.

We are no longer a small, family and friends run site that no one has heard of. We are the 2nd largest Football message board in the world and one of the most popular message boards of any kind in the world. Our membership continues to increase by 80-100 members a day. Rumors that are generated on Finheaven have been published in the national press and we have a number of players, scouts and agents who frequently read the site.

People know who we are...

Finally, we have to consider our advertisers. Google Adsense comprises a good portion of our revenue and we depend on that money to help pay our costs. The content in the Depths violated our TOS with Adsense and we risked losing that income stream.

We weighed the possibility of moderating the forum but decided that would be too time consuming considering the 'culture' of the Depths forum.

What happens now?

The TOS will be enforced throughout the other forums just as we always have. Since we have no alternate forum to dump Smack threads into, you may see threads get locked and points issued for any clear violation of the TOS within the thread.

We don't expect to see smack talk that violates the TOS anywhere on Finheaven. If you should become tempted to cross the line, please close your browser window and cool down a bit before posting. We don't want to lose any members over this move.

In the end we did what we believe is best for Finheaven and we hope you will understand.