It looks like the San Jose Sharks had enough of the problems with trying to keep a clean community discussion board and finally shut theirs down:
The Sharks Chatroom has been shutdown indefinitely due to repeated inappropriate abuse of the system. This decision is in response to the high volume of postings containing sexually explicit language, cyber sex links, junk mail, unacceptable or inflammatory language and more. We do not wish to have the Sharks organization, our fans, or our sponsors associated in any manner with this material and, considering the many youth who regularly visit sjsharks.com, wish to avoid serving as a conduit for those individuals attempting these improper communications.
The San Jose Mercury had this to say about it:
For months, a random check of the board would show porn links on as many as a third of the threads on the front page. But behavior among the core fans is a problem as well; there’s a good chance that if not for the Sharks’ message board, the booing of the Canadian national anthem in May never would have happened, because that’s where some of the more idiotic “fans” pushed the move.
Personally I never used the discussion boards, but from what I gather it seems they didn’t have much of a registration process and were trying to moderate everything with one employee (who undoubtedly had other tasks to tend to). It sounds like they (the Sharks) were also trying to exert too much control over the discussion content. Hopefully they’ll be able to re-launch a discussion forum with better registration and more community policing and a more realistic approach as to letting the content be what it’ll be and just live with it.