same for me, some tech guy in my hometown set up a forum in the early 2000s that we could all use.
it served as a nice source for local news and gossip since facebook didn't exist yet
but the guy running it eventually got tired of the drama and unexpectedly pulled the plug
can't say i blame him, but i still missed it
I posted about it in a different thread, but mine was a Yu-gi-oh! forum called Janime.
It was originally hosted on a server called netzgames.net, then a German server. Some "politics" amongst the Germans eventually led to the forums being booted off the server with the "technical" German sysadmin being one of the exiled...because the other German fellas wanted to fuck him over.
The sob story the exile stated was that the other Germans were doing the things to fuck exile over. However, an intro thread in a forum managed by a former admin stated that the hosting site simply didn't care because the forums were not profitable enough.
Well, that German exile would be the one to pull the plug on the forums years later. By the time the death had occurred, I no longer went to the forum much because of college and stuff, but the periodic return resulted in "nothing" one year...so I had to do some digging...and I found someone posted basically an obituary explaining what happened.
That German exile would read PMs between members. Private isn't really private in vBulletin.
Me being somewhat fearlessly abrasive at times...did get the magical "shadowban" from the German where my account disappeared. I could login without issue and post, but no one else could. I eventually got restored because other members, even one who I didn't have friendly terms with, were not in agreement with the action taken against me. The crime...well...do not go around accusing a German of being like Hitler.
Funny enough...other members would notice him becoming tyrannical after promotion to admin.