I'm looking through the Internet Archive right now. I'm on an August 2008 snapshot and I don't see the fail bin. Are you sure it was as late as 2009?
Well, I definitely recall being able to access it when I joined in September '08. I can't remember when it definitely disappeared, but it couldn't have been any later than 2010, so I assumed it was sometime in '09, or at least late '08.
I'm pretty sure I was able to use it when I joined. And I only lurked on the forums breifly beforehand, mainly to look at what sort of Add-Ons had been made, and how to do things in the Demo.
And I'm pretty sure I never used Add-Ons before I purchased the game (don't know if you even could, or can), and I know I downloaded a broken Fire-engine from there before and played with it, so that must have been September '08, when I purchased the game, or later.
Any other veterans able to back my claim up on this? I hope I'm not going crazy.
Either I'm completely imagining all this, or it just doesn't show up on the Internet Archive, or I may have had authorisation to it when I shouldn't have?
That wouldn't be the first time that a new user had rights he shouldn't have. Around the same time, '08/'09, Badspot accidentally gave a new member full Administrator abilities, and he went and banned a few users.