Read all about it here:
http://wordpress.org/development/2007/09/wordpress-23/

So in December 2006, ezboard Inc. wrote:

“Do I have to switch to this next version of software?
“No, not unless you want to. But we envisage that almost all ezboards will be switched over to this version at some point in time. We will keep server clusters running old software for some time…

“Do I have to move my board to yuku.com domain?
“No, you do not have move to yuku.com. If you’d prefer to stay on ezboard.com with your current ezboard software you can….

“Will my ezboard forum be switched over without my consent?
“No, boards will need to be switched by the admin. At this stage, they will not be switched over by our system if you do not initiate the switch.

“What will happen if I choose not to migrate my board?
“At this point in time, nothing. Your ezboard will continue to run as it always has. You have a minimum of 12 months* before you need to make a decision, and as stated above, some clusters of boards on the current software may be kept running.
“* written in December 2006 - these details will soon be updated…
“This page was last modified 10:41, 12 September 2007.”

So I’d guess that from that, you’d be pretty safe to assume that ezboard, Inc. would not migrate ezboards over to Yuku without the board “owner’s” consent and they would not need to make decision about switching until into 2008 as a minimum. Well, you might be safe to assume that if that were to have been a statement from a company other than ezboard, Inc. who - let’s face it - are not exactly accurate with their statements in my experience.

Strange then when on 5 September 2007 a user, “Wild Jazie” writes:

“I’ve heard some boards have been migrate to yuku without the ezop’s knowledge, is this true?
Becuz I don’t want my board moved until I absolutely have to… “

Surely not? Er … well … yes! On 6 September, an ezboard Customer Services Rep., ezDollar, writes:

“Regarding ezboards being migrated without request, it is my current understanding that this is true in some cases. We haven’t been given any further details on that subject.” [emphasis added]

Another user, kerryborn28, writes:

“We do NOT want our board moved without our permission. I thought that Mr. Labatt’s blog made it clear we would not be moved without us giving permission.”

Ah yes. Those would be the Labatt blogs on Yuku and ezboard that ezboard, Inc. have removed as part of their efforts to erase the past.

Along comes another user, David Pierce, who posts the question about backups which he then repeated on Yuku (before it was deleted).

In it, he states that:

“EZBoard had foolishly left their own backup system connected to the rest of EZBoard, making it a prime target for hackers”

ezDollar is quick to deny that, writing:

“Unless you are ezboard staff, a law-enforcement agent who worked on that case, or… the hacker… you cannot possibly know how the hacking was accomplished. Therefore, the above quoted statement is speculation and/or rumor and should not be stated as if it is a fact.”

Funny that, because he, along with many of us, recall Labatt saying that the claimed hacker had managed to hop over and delete the backups…

The regularly-touted line that “Yuku is still in beta” when anything goes wrong, is then used against them by “7dlh7″:

“If Yuku is not finalized yet, why are we being told INvoluntary migrations are in the works?”

Good point! ezboard can’t have it both ways.

And then, on 13 September 2007, a rapid “clarification” by ezDollar:

“I said that it was my understanding that a few boards had been migrated without the ezOps prior knowledge. That was true — that was my understanding, based on something I had seen posted elsewhere — but it was a misunderstanding on my part. Yuku staff has informed me that they are not migrating boards except at the request of the ezOp and that no one has been forced to migrate.

“It seems that there have been a couple of situations where a board was migrated as part of a developer’s test, because the developer thought the ezboard was abandoned, but the ezboard was not deleted and those situations were resolved postively. There have also been situations where there seemed to be conflicting and confusing requests from ezOps and admins of the same board so, if you are an admin or ezOp, please make sure everyone on your board’s staff is on the same page before you request a migration or ask to have one stopped.”

So it’s Yet Another Yuku Developer Cock-Up! Yeah, right…

Meanwhile over on Yuku, “gobonas99″ writes:

“So…if there are no mandatory migrations happening yet, then WHY is the ezboard that I frequent being FORCED to transition to “Yucki” this week - even though the Admins have NOT requested a transfer (and in fact submitted tickets to request the transfer be stopped) because the majority of our members do NOT want to move until we absolutely have to??”

“alison” lets it rip with:

“No ezboard has been migrated without the knowledge or agreement of the admins. The ezop of your board has agreed to migrate to yuku.

Edited to add: We’ve found a ticket from your admin asking to stop the migration. We can do that, of course - but perhaps your admin should talk to your ezop?”

ORLY? “rmangles” writes:

“I’m the ezOp of the board mentioned above.

ezBoard/Yuku began the migration process with no input from the ezOp or Admins of the board. When tickets were entered, there was no mention of stopping the process.

The migration itself is F***ed up and I’ve exchanged numerous emails about it.

No one has ever mentioned that the migration could be UNDONE.

How do I make it STOP, Alison???”

So who’s lying? You decide, dear reader. I know who I think it is..

So I posted about awkward user questions (for ezboard, Inc.) about Yuku backups that had the audacity to quote what Labatt and his cronies had promised in the past.

My blog entry ended with this:

“Ouch! So Alison shuts the thread down. Standard behaviour from ezboard.”

I was wrong. That wasn’t the extent of their standard behaviour, which has been remedied today by the thread being deleted or hidden … as usual. Now that’s standard behaviour from ezboard!

Oh and after posting about the Justin Timerlake KickApps advert thingy yesterday, it’s been quickly removed by them as well.

Oh the power!

I mentioned that there was a particularly obtrusive advert placed in every single Yuku profile for some sort of Justin Timberlake show on HBO that was due to air on “Labor Day” in the US a couple of weeks ago.

As expected, this hadn’t gone down well over on Yuku and as usual, the Customer Services drones hadn’t got a clue about them:

“Well the google ads are back now. We are working to fix the targeting of the ads as well which got messed up somehow.”

They weren’t of course…

Later on, another explanation was offered:

“Yeah it’s back now. Sorry about that. I think maybe they’re using it for testing purposes or something now since the event it’s advertising is now over.”

Here’s an idea: why not check with your colleagues and find out?

In other threads and despite saying she hoped it would be changed a week or more ago, the latest excuse is that the video contest it was promoting was stil running.

The company behind this campaign (or just ‘pain’) is KickApps - see Mashable’s Article which also mentions that KickApps had recently secured $11M of funding.

Funding for what? Well coincidentally I heard a rumour today that ezboard has been bought by … KickApps. Completely unsubstantiated rumour, of course. If that is the case, I wonder what KickApps needs the other $10,999,999 for

Oh dear!

It seems that ezboard managed to have yet another data loss involving their new backup strategy [sic]:

“Ok good news and bad news. Good news: the backups work. Bad news: we lost todays posts. We had a massive database failure (go mysql). Please don’t blame the admins. They hate me probably more than you right now.”

Oh and that was edited… Now don’t forget, Survivor Sucks is one of the busiest boards on Yuku and it was 11 September when posts are made to mark the anniversary of “9/11″.

Notice how it’s not ezboard’s fault - it never is, is it? - but yet again they’re blaming the software rather than what they have done both in terms of their own software and their strategies. Just like they did with Smalltalk.

Even the SS Admins chose to have a go at ezboard for a change, rather than kowtowing to them:

“Just to reiterate

1. “the backups work”
2. Backups are used to restore data lost for various reasons
3. Testing the backups caused a day’s worth of data to be lost
4. Apparently no backups of this data exist”

Testing backups, eh?

Now after paying all that money to ezboard when SS was based there, a user asks the obvious question:

“Why exactly would we move a board this large to a place that’s still in BETA?!?!?!? Unless of course we were going to be guinea pigs to see how well it could handle stuff (which it can’t obviously or at least the idiots in charge can’t anyway)”

No answer to that one yet…

Now we all know that the whole issue about backups is a sore point as far as ezboard, Inc. are concerned. Understandably so, given their track record on this. So they probably weren’t too pleased when the administrator of an ezboard chose to (apparently) copy a post he’d made over in the ezboard Help [sic] Forums.

These are some extracts from his post:

“I am asking this here because I have had a support ticket open for many days with Yuku that has remained unanswered.”

“Following the huge disasters at EZBoard in May and August of 2005, in which most all EZBoards lost many posts, and my two grief-support boards lost thousands of precious posts dealing with people’s expressions of grief and loss at the death of family members and friends, including memorials for deceased children, are general email was sent around by then-CEO Robert Labatt stating that with Yuku, admins would have the capability of backing up their own boards. (EZBoard had foolishly left their own backup system connected to the rest of EZBoard, making it a prime target for hackers).” 

Some intelligent questions and points, I think.

He posts some excerpts from the posts made at the time of the last major ezboard data loss where Robert Labatt, ezboard, Inc. CEO, stated that “[Yuku] is faster, more reliable, offers automated backup to your home computer, fast restorals”, etc. This was on 23 June 2005.

By 19 December 2006 - some 18 months later - Michelle, a “Helpdesk Representative”, allegedly wrote that “Yuku does back up baords on our end but I will have to check on the status of admin backups.” But I thought Labatt was talking in the present tense back in 2005? Well, apparently:

“…what the tech guys have told me is that the backup function is nearly complete just a few minor adjustments left - but it’s being intensively tested at the current time. Apparently they want to make sure that a board owner can’t do more damage by restoring their board - so they’re trying to make it as foolproof as possible.

Regular system backups do currently happen though.”

So they’d gone back in terms of development? And of course, there’s still no facility to do this well over two years on from Labatt’s promise.

“Let It Rip” Alison then tries to defuse the thread:

“That is pretty much it - when changes are made to the core model of yuku, a back up made 2 months ago might fail to restore, since the database tables or whatever else is involved might have changed. We can’t offer you a backup that backs up great… but doesn’t restore. We do have backups, and you can see when the last date of backup was for your board in your stats and logs section. We also have an undo function for deleted topics, and coming soon is an undo feature for deleted forums. But back up to your hard disk is not available yet.”

Yes, Alison, but surely the Admin would want to restore from the most recent backup, unless a two month old one was the most recent?

Someone else then tells everyone the unpalatable (to ezboard) truth:

“The ezBoard brand is a joke in the industry, associated with poor management, bad service and loads of problems. The other real problem, unlike other systems, is that ezBoard and Yuku have no export process. Why? To avoid mass defections. ezBoard and Yuku is all about prisoner loyalty, trapping people and binding them to the service because they stand to loose their users and all they’ve built. Read up, most people do not like ezBoard and Yuku is not shaping up to be anything revolutionary. All of the features are found free on other systems or software for decades. It’s much cheaper and more efficient to run your own board hosted elsewhere.

“Yuku is just promises and is taking so long to implement the most basic of features. They can’t even get the current pushes done right, where is the Quality Assurance Team when you need them? Don’t get me wrong, Yuku is 10x better than ezBoard but still lacks much of the functionality of many free or inexpensice alternative solutions.”

Ouch! So Alison shuts the thread down. Standard behaviour from ezboard.