Speculations was one of the best places for market news, rumors and information. It had the problem that the person running it refused to place ads on the site, never required registration, and refused to ever moderate a thread. As a result there was widespread abuse. Spam was rampant. Messages lived forever, even weird flames, and there were instances of people fraudulently using the names of others.
The simple thing to do was to admit that the original policies, formulated in the late 1990s, were wrong and switch to a more modern approach to threaded conversations.
Instead of admitting their errors and fixing the site, they closed it down. They didn’t even leave the huge base of discussion and information in place.
I will miss the site and I regret that it was only dumb stubbornness that killed it.