Fri 24 Nov 2006
With the glacial progress of development over at Yuku - they really should invest some money in some decent coders - members of the ezboard customer base are beginning to get edgy - those that haven’t seen the light and jumped ship already, of course. Boards like the massive AskMen.com one that abandoned ezboard earlier this month (for a phpBB option).
If you recall, nearly nine months ago Labatt proudly declared that:
“Yuku is really coming along”
and:
“We anticipate that Yuku will be ready for prime time in late 2006″
He went on to say that:
“all boards will move to Yuku eventually. But NOT until Yuku is ready for prime time and it is proven to be easier to use, more stable, faster and better than ezboard”
Of course, Labatt then went on to say that:
“it is true that ezboard, Inc. will be shutting down ezboard.com. BUT, not until all of you have moved to Yuku. When is that? You’ll tell us by moving to Yuku. We are not going to turn off ezboard.com at the end of 2006. We will turn off ezboard.com when everyone has moved to Yuku.”
He then had to modify that once more:
“No. You can’t keep your board on ezboard forever. Eventually all ezboards will be moved to Yuku, but you don’t have to move right now, or even very soon. There will be a cutoff date when all ezboards will be moved to Yuku, but we don’t know that exact date.”
Fast-forward to earlier this week and there’s a posting in the ezSupporter forums - from where, in common with all the ezboard Help [sic] Forums, I’m banned by ezboard, Inc. - in which there’s a reply to a concerned ezboard customer. In that thread, an ezboard staffer writes:
“…You can stay on ezboard for as long as you choose, no one will be moved to Yuku by force. But at some point in the future there will come a time when all of the ezboards that are going to move have moved and they will shut down the remaining boards. I don’t see this happening for quite a while. There are thousands and thousands of ezboards and it will take many months to move them all.”
Now let’s just have a look at that again:
“You can stay on ezboard for as long as you choose, no one will be moved to Yuku by force.”
Well that’s great news for those people who like ezboard but loathe Yuku. Even if it contradicts (again) what Labatt says. But then she wrote:
“But at some point in the future there will come a time when all of the ezboards that are going to move have moved and they will shut down the remaining boards.”
So let’s get this right: you won’t be forced to leave ezboard and move to Yuku but if you don’t, your ezboard will be nuked! Excellent stuff!
Just like walking the plank then: you’re not forced to walk to the end and into the ocean, but if you don’t, you’re run through with a cutlass…
2 Responses to “Walking the Plank, ezboard Style!”
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December 1st, 2006 at 6:43 am
well, if this isn’t the most one-sided article I’m not sure what is. you are correct - ezboard SHOULD stick with its 8 year old technology for ever and ever, until the end of the world, so that you can live in a little fairy fantasy world of buggy message board software while everyone else moves on to newer platforms.
and also, what good is critiquing a system that is not even complete yet? I’ll tell you what - no good! it’s a waste of time, and really the attempts at spreading bad press is just giving the devteam tips.
December 1st, 2006 at 3:13 pm
The point of critiquing a software solution is to ensure that the developers know what needs to be fixed. That’s the whole point of a beta test, after all. Which is why ezboard’s decision to shut down the help forums was such a stupid thing to do and shows that under the present management team they have absolutely no idea how to do this sort of thing.
The problem with ezboard was all of ezboard’s making, but they found it impossible with their current staff to fix things properly without breaking something else. We’ll set aside for one moment their lax ’security’ which led directly to the events of May 2005…
Once they’d made the decision that they needed to abandon the ezboard platform - rightly or wrongly - the way they’ve handled it since has been nothing short of a comedy of errors.
But having made yet more promises - something Labatt in particular is really good at doing - ezboard needs to follow through and deliver on those promises. He hasn’t, of course, and a number of ezApologists will just carry on regardless because you like what Yuku becomes. That’s abolutely fine.
It’s just that there are far better and cheaper solutions out there from companies that actually deliver on their promises and keep their word.