Hi Kal-el,
Basically there were some posts by some users that were not acceptable (the one mentioned by user "Zhuge Liang") because of hate speech or similar.
Possibly he raised the issue with the mod/admin who warned said users and asked them to moderate their tones, but in some occasions they continued.
For personal attacks against each other some of the users were temporarily banned, but apart from that the admin tried to avoid being too strong on the penalties (the only user I remember was perma banned was one that was temporarily banned and after coming back he started again with personal attacks and insults against other users and the admin/mod).
User Zhuge Liang (who, in the Russia defence forum I believe had the user ID "Walter Von Odenburg") could have also raised the issue in a new topic and communicated that he would have needed to report the violation in case of lack of action, instead of just doing that.
Then a few months ago Walther Von Odenburg reported many of the posts he perceived as a violation to the hosting provider, than changed his user ID to "Marshal Rokossovsky" and continued to post for a while.
For a while he seemed also reasonable and continued in some of the conversation, then a few days before the forum was cancelled, he cancelled his account (so his posts also disappeared from the forum, and he could not be hold accountable for his answers).
I agree that some of the posts he reported as a violation were not acceptable, but I believe there should have been a better way to solve the situation instead of destroying the forum.
Possibly the Admin should have been more strict with some of the outburst of some of the problematic users, but he was also overwhelmed (there was another mod, but was not active in the last few months, and before the forum was cancelled there were discussions to nominate an additional moderator to help the admin).
Furthermore it felt almost absurd that after the original reports a few months ago he stayed in the forum and engaged in conversation and then from a day to the other cancelled everything as if to destroy evidences of his own answers.
Honestly I also do not feel comfortable to engage in further conversations with user Zhuge Liang/Marshall Rokossovsky/Walther Von Odenburg.
P.S.
It is a pity because the forum was around for a long time (and myself I was a user for almost 11 years), and the original founder/admin was a former Russian special forces officer who got a degenerative disease a few years ago, when he transferred control to the new admin.
P.P.S.
It is my first post in this forum, are there rules about introducing ourselves in a specific thread?