Well this issue isn't like "we don't like the Tavern any more; we close it now."

I think I can speak for the team in saying nobody particularly liked the Tavern itself. As far as I can see most of us including myself, used not to mind it either. Just one of those threads you know. At time one might even commit to actually reading it or posting there.

But we've had rather [massive] outbreaks of SPAM, trolling, rudeness and general bad behaviour in this forum on multiple occasions. One such occasion saw the Tavern shut down; rudeness saw a page or two of the Tavern being wiped from these boards; and we've had another such occasion not too long ago.

The thing with a threat made in the Tavern to flood another mod's subfora with SPAM made us decide to do something that was pending for a long time. Much of the reasoning as outlined in the posts by Foot refer more to previous misbehaviour than to the last incident in the Tavern.

We do have a strong feeling that a lot of the misbehaviour elsewhere on these fora is fostered or incited at the Tavern; hence why it had to go first.