I love a good conspiracy, but I just don’t see one here. Several people have pointed to this series of events and said “wow” but no matter how hard I try, I can’t see any connection between DaveN getting banned from WebWhatevahWorld and a massive UK-based botnet attack taking down WebWhatevahWorld, just concidentally the same week that competing site (supported by DaveN) launched.

Last week: Sphinn.com launched. DaveN says it’s cool and he’ll be participating. Danny acknowledges it competes with WebMasterWorld.

Last Week: As reported this week by Tabke, WMW was attacked by a massive botnet out of the UK, where DaveN has an ISP.

This week: DaveN notes that it looks like Brett Tabke is cloaking back links to Google in advance of launching another competing SEO/SEM news site.

This week: Brett Tabke’s WebWhatevahWorld bans long-time member and moderator DaveN.

Okay so we have all this circumstantial evidence and the details all line up, and the personalities match the potential for a conspiracy theory, but really is it that strong? Does it really suggest that DaveN (former part-owner of ThreadWatch) had anything to do with a UK-based botnet attacking webmasterworld, which is launching a direct competitor to new site Sphinn after ThreadWatch was burned out back to eliminate any threat to the commercial joint ventures? Nah.