Time to close the forums?

Forums have a good spot, then they tend to go down hill unless the moderators run it like a police-state - which tends to make it go down hill only slower.

The Portal Forums are on the decline, there's a lot more people, most of them alright but there's a bunch of people who just insist on getting into flame wars, those that every other post seems to be criticism of someone's post which just adds to the problem, temporary bannings tend to do nothing, I'd ban outright, but sometimes they contribute to the boards in a sensible fashion.

May be it's just time to shut the boards down, they themselves have no revenue stream at all, and are heaviest on the server. Hmmm.