Jon, as near as I can tell, the post of Max's that Shambles keeps quoting was in 1999, and Garg got banned later that year or in early 2000. I don't know if this thread was the first one closed or not, but it was closed ("retired") in Jan 00 - by Max. He closed this thread later the same day.

At the very least, this shows that Max adapted when people got serious about being nasty. It shows the closing of threads began with Max. I don't think he believed that level of nastiness would ever happen here when he wrote the post Shambles keeps quoting.