I think that the REAL reason that sharkyforums closed their Off Topic forums was a financial one. When Internet.com took over, they made some MAJOR cutbacks to Sharky's site, the biggest of which was getting rid of Sharky himself. I have a hunch that internet.com just got sick of paying the bandwidth bill and moderation cost of OT, so they used the flame posts as an excuse to close the forum.
Of course, the loss of new content from these cutbacks made me lose interest in the site. I only rarely visit the sharkyextreme and sharkyforums now, mostly because there isn't much new reading material and discussions happening there anymore. I have a hunch that many other people feel the same way, and now spend more time reading Anandtech and Tom's Hardware Guide instead.
Of course, such a cutback to Anandtech would be even more financially devastating, because they would potentially lose hundreds of subscribers who pay $20 a year to participate in ATOT. This forum has more new content each day than the next THREE most popular forums COMBINED, so Anand can?t really afford to kill it. If they did, their forums might die just as quickly as Sharky?s did.