- HornFans
Infobox_Company
company_name = HornFans.com, LLC
company_
company_type =Online community
foundation = 1999
location_city = Austin, Texas
location_country = USA
founder = Katy Agnor & Bob Wheeler
homepage = [http://www.hornfans.com/ www.hornfans.com]HornFans is a
University of Texas at Austin -focusedonline community that was created in 1999. It is currently the 22nd-most visited college sports website, 13th-most visited team-specific website, and the 8th-most visited independent college sports website. [ [http://www.alexa.com/browse?&CategoryID=30288 Alexa: Sites in College and University] ] The site has over 43,000 registered users as ofDecember 19 ,2006 .Hornfans was created as a partnership between Bob Wheeler and Katy Agnor, with an initial investment of $1000.cite news|title="Founders of UT fan Web site lock horns"|url=http://nl.newsbank.com/nl-search/we/Archives?p_product=AASB&p_theme=aasb&p_action=search&p_maxdocs=200&p_topdoc=1&p_text_direct-0=0E9C2573C346AF3E&p_field_direct-0=document_id&p_perpage=10&p_sort=YMD_date:D&s_trackval=GooglePM|work=
Austin American Statesman |date=1999-12-20 |accessdate = 2008-01-18] Disputes between the pair led to a lawsuit being filed in federal court and led to the eventual ownership of the site by Agnor. HornFans is currently owned and operated by Robert and Katy Agnor. [ [http://www.hornfans.com/aboutus/index.php Hornfans.com -- About us] ]Criticism
HornFans has a strict policy against criticism of players or coaches. [ [http://forums.hornfans.com/php/wwwthreads/guidelines.php FAQ ] ] Moderators enforce it by deleting such posts and suspending (or banning outright) posters who go against this policy. Additionally, the administrators are quick to ban posters on forums such as West Mall and Quackenbush's for expressing conservative opinions. One of the moderators admitted in 2001 that 620 total users had been banned as of that date. [ [http://forums.hornfans.com/php/wwwthreads/showflat.php?Cat=&Board=lockerroom&Number=515183 Post-loss BBS phenomena ] ]
Historically the forums have often become inaccessible due to the heavy traffic during Longhorn games which overloaded the hardware. For many years the computer hardware was not upgraded, even when posters offered to donate to pay for more servers and bandwidth (in early 2008 the Hornfans hardware finally underwent a major upgrade). Alexa.com rates the site speed as "very slow" with the average load time at 5.3 seconds. [ [http://www.alexa.com/data/details/main/hornfans.com hornfans.com - Site Information from Alexa ] ] In late 2007, due to these concerns, several members parted to form a new website ( [http://www.shaggybevo.com shaggybevo.com] ). [ [http://www.shaggybevo.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=312 shaggybevo.com :: View topic - Anti-Hornfans identity ] ]
The management of the site has also been called into question for a lack of general maintenance and attention to the site news. The news on the front page of the site is rarely updated. As of
28 July 2008 , the front page of Hornfans.com contained "Top Stories" and "In The News" headlines from1 March 2007 , however, even these older stories were inaccessible as the site continued to experience hardware and software failures.References
Wikimedia Foundation. 2010.