I have a very hard time believing that these cases would have been any better without the local boards.
These were cases of people who were simply harassing their victims in every venue open to them. The fact that the local boards were one of those venues doesn't indicate that they cause problems; it just means that people who cause problems were willing to abuse them to do so that little bit more.
True. But even if we can't stop them (or not immediately), we can stop giving them forum (in the non-Internet sense).
But again, the insults and harassment going on was only a part of the reason. The main reason was the (justified) complaint that people had moved so many IC discussions into the forum that quite a few players got the impression that they wouldn't fully play the game without participating in the forum as well.
