An update

and isn't mapletip's owner one of the reasons fiel initially created sp? because they wanted his stuff? doesn't make sense that he would sell it to someone from there.

I don't know anything about that. What I do know is that Stephen put a decent amount of effort into running MapleTip, and some might argue that it only failed as a forum because Sleepywood was just more popular at the time. It was set up to be a huge forum and, at the peak of its success, ended up being a close-knit community similar to Southperry, but with even less active members. Now it's pretty much deserted.