My 0.02$ about vB5

Let's spread the word

 

I think a lot of people feel the same way and this has been communicated to management often over the last few weeks- but I am forced to point out a few factual inaccuracies with the above-

1) Ticket support has already been extended once due to known issues with the software. VB4 Forum Only also launched with only 30 days support but it was a long time before that became enforced. Remains to be seen how long VB5 support gets extended.

2) By no math I know can someone conclude VB4 has less features than VB3.

3) There is official Germany support, although not with a dedicated forum you can submit support tickets in German or post in German and it will get answered.

Otherwise I understand his frustration completely. I only hope (and know from personal experience) people will say things to get the point across (and it needs to be made) but in time if the product truly improves they will often come back.

 

1. I'm somebody who thinks that worlds needs a little bit drama, that's why i make such posts...
If everybody shuts up and says only "it's not what i wanted, but i have to accept it, it's ok" nothing will change! That's the same reason for my other bye drama post(the xf bye post)

In the end, it didn't change anything, but it was good for my ego & karma
2. I don't think that ragtek/leinad_r will EVER come back to vB.
I had already my 2 expensive lessons (with vB4 and vB5)
Everybody thought that IB had also their lesson and that vB5 will have some WOW factors, and yea it had several big wow WTF factors

• the missing features
• the bugs
• the javascript abuse, etc..

I admit that i'm vB addicted, i was IMO after floris the nr. 2 fanboy.
I was really happy, as i've read the announcement that IB bought vBulletin and how they're going to improve it with their know how, their big dev & QA team..
But IB destroyed everything =>

• Devs hadn't any know how about vBulletin (may i remember about http://www.vbulletin.com/forum/foru...ontent-pgp?s=abc019ce2f0b3152cbaea438cbe4aeb5 )
• QA team wasn't able to find bugs or they had to ignore them...

People said "ignore it, they're just starting, they need some time to get a team and work into the code..)
OK we were waiting and waiting...
New project managers came and leave, they gave as promises which we've never seen.. but who cares..., right?

I really hoped that everything will turn to the better, but nothing happened. And the last actions (removing of scotts post, putting him on moderation or harvay list, the new feedback forum access rules) are showing that it's going to be much worse in the future.
They don't accept critique, they "want" suggestions but then they don't care about them.
They want people to post bugs & suggestions in jira, as threads and to vote for them and then they have to vote in a poll again?
They're spending much more time (=money) with posting B.S and posting in web how great vB5 is, instead of improving the product.
IMO they missed already the point of return with the first public vB5 release.
The only reason that people still care about vBulletin is the success of the pre IB era.
Most of the forum admins, and people in this business know that the brand is destroyed, now it's to us, to spread the word and to show the future clients, that vBulletin isn't the quality product,which it was some years ago and that it's better to search for alternatives.
As i left vB4 world, i wrote that i'll be more then happy if the vB team shows me that i'm wrong, but now i think it's not necessary to do it, because it's impossible for them.
vB5 was their chance, but it seems that they didn't wanted to get the people back, they just wanted to get new money again...

 

On the "post in German and you will get answers" note Joe, I'd like to sort of disagree. Yes, German customers may be able to get answers in German on the forum. However, there is nothing inviting them to do it and it is actually against the forum rules. It was a rule on the vB.com forum that posts must be written in English. I'd even like to prove it too, but there is no longer a link to the forum rules or any ToS for the use of vB.com's forum for that matter. (I even tried to use the search to find the forum rules thread, but the search on vB.com is totally fubar. LOL!)

And as for "if the product truly improves" note. Nice you say "if" and "truly improves". Because, first you have to have people who really care, who understand the product and the business behind the product and also understand the customers' wants and needs AND someone who can make the right decisions with that knowledge within that group of people for true improvement (which actually should be innovation) to occur. IB doesn't have that at all, so I personally highly doubt "true improvement" will ever happen. If any improvements do happen, getting them done will be a painstakingly slow process just like the return to halfway decent quality for vB4 and just like the extremely prolonged release of the improved Mobile Suite.

Joe, honestly, do you really think the situation will be different there anytime in the near to middle distant future?

Scott

 

Whether or whether not a rules thread from 1999 was ever updated doesn't negate the fact German Support is available. No one gets an invitation to post in any language, including English.

I have no idea when or if the situation will improve but I will try my best to improve it- as are others on the team.

 

Hmm...sounds mighty IB there Joe. Put yourself in the shoes of someone who only speaks German....

By inviting, I meant a forum, which is dedicated to German customers in the German language.

And you are right. The rules don't negate the fact German support might be available. The fact the rules haven't changed is just another one of the small details lost in the major problems IB has currently, just like a missing link to a ToS.

The fact you say you have no idea, if the situation will improve or not just confirms, for the time being, that it most likely won't get any better. Thanks for the honesty. I definitely know the support team are behind the customers.

Scott

 

I always wondered why there was a vb Germany to be honest, wasn't or isn't there a vb China too?
I would assume all forums could be covered in one giant forum.. but then again, I'm a bit of a content junkie

 

vB China was shut down, I think the people running it just left, no idea either. I think it was done before I started.

 

I'd like to say I wasn't surprised by vB5... I knew it wasn't going to be good long before I saw it. But to be honest, I'm actually really surprised HOW bad it is. Literally I don't think a single thing works in the final version... search, signatures, PMs, read post tracking, etc...

Literally nothing works as expected. It's crazy.

 

It's mad really, but this is why it's getting so much stick posted about it.

 

Perhaps, they published this state of art mess made by their outsourced for cheap 20 coders with hope that real & skilled coders on vb.org will clean it up and make from it usable product that they could sell later to their costumers for as low as $250. Perhaps even they think they could make a bank on it when they cut support to previous version as they already did with vb3 and force their loyal customers to upgrade. What a bunch of naughty boys!

 

But support for 3.x was never cut- you still get support for 3.x and it's being updated for PHP 5.4. The facts are not with you.

 

By "cut the support" I meant - bugfixes and new features requested by their customers.
As for their help to customers with moving things forward I don't think there is any support at all. All they will do when comes to "how can I do this or that?" is sending the customers to vbulletin.org.
Of course there is still vb.org and a few good and talented guys like you Joe that are willing to help others and thank you for that. If not this then vbulletin platform would left by MANY if not most of ones who are still using it.

 

Well personally I know we indeed provide support for vBulletin issues in VB 3.x- However if an issue is caused by modification then yes they are and always have been directed to vBulletin.org- that isn't going to change.

 

These could have been the last words of the Titanic crew when they hit the iceberg.
IB (Bob and Joe) destroyed vBulletin and forumrunner because they are just too greedy and incompetent in the software developing business.
You can't fix it nor the other team members can, it's just too late.

 

So I just read that IB will not be including the membership page in vBulletin 5. I guess they felt it was useless. smh..

 

One of the first smart things they have done. The membership page *is* useless. Like have you *ever* used to to find a member? It's biggest use is to give spammers an easy way to harvest all the usernames on your site.

 

True I think I could count on one hand the number of times I've used it, but just removing it.completely seems odd.

I mean, it is really that hard to create a grid page of your users?

 

It's not hard, but like I said... Should have never been there in old versions of vB as far as I was concerned. It was the first thing I told people to do (disable it) on my "Optimize vBulletin" article. https://forums.digitalpoint.com/threads/optimize-vbulletin-4.1767626/

Removing it from XenForo was also something I did before migrating.