Are the vBulletin devs "Brainwashed"?

I've tried to support the devs, I understand that have bosses telling them what to so but anymore when I see a staff member post I automatically become skeptical of what they say and whether it's the truth or not.

This is from many things I see on the forums.
The lack of vb4 news (for 8 or 9 months now) which has been "waiting on mobile" really vb... does it take 3/4 of a year to fix code that shouldn't take but a few weeks to fix and test.

Then there is vb5, which is a complete train wreak in my opinion. IB is sending emails out acting like everything is fine, I've had several clients email me asking when I'm ready to upgrade them to vb5... I tell every single one of them that it'll be at least a year after what IB calls "gold" to be out before I'd ever suggest upgrading a live site.

The attitude on the forums.. This use to only be from Paul M, I can respect that he has an opinion on things but it's starting to spread to others like Wayne, Trever and recently (but not surprising) Mark. All of them act like there is nothing wrong with the way IB is driving vB, and in most cases they make anyone asking questions in the forum, feel like they are morons for asking.

Another thing that goes back to the vb4 hold up is the forumrunner app. Has there been ANY improvements since IB purchased it, or are they just running it into the ground as well.

I'm just so sick about reading about vBulletin and the lack of updates. I'm tired of the lack of updates from xf, but at least I know the product is running 99% bug free, and the developers that have been making mods still seem positive and very helpful.

Reading the vbulletin forums reminds me of a 4th grade classroom, nothing but pointing fingers and no one taking responsibility for what's going on.

</rant>

 

I wouldn't take on anything Mark.B says. He was running around slagging off Internet Brands for years on as many forums as he could. Biggest "two faced" joker on the web that guy!

 

Everything i had to say, i said in https://www.vbulletin.com/forum/sho...Road-Map-amp-Versioning?p=2381945#post2381945

Nobody was able to provide a useful answer.... This says EVERYTHING about the company and their employees...
I'm completely finished with them

 

I doubt they're brainwashed. It's just common sense, you don't insult your employer when you're still working for them and many of the staff remaining kind of like still having a job in the current economic climate.

Well, that and some of them were basically vBulletin fanboys to begin with. In fact, if any company is 'Running the Asylum' so to speak (aka hiring fans and basically turning their product into something based on modifications) it's vBulletin.

http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/RunningTheAsylum

Indeed, I'd say the situation with vB's support staff is basically equivalent to that at many comic book companies, a bunch of promoted fanboys with an agenda treating it like a fan work and being blind to criticism.

 

I have a feeling they picked the pre-release team with this in mind as well. Give them something free to play with and they'll talk nicely about you. This was also in the DNA we signed to an extent. There is so much more I'd like to say about I'm bound to this legal doc for now. I can only try and start these threads to see what others think.

 

It's understandable staff are always going to take the side of vBulletin, they get paid to do and job and they ain't going to put it on the line by agreeing with members complaints. You have to make your own mind up and ignore what staff might come out with, as it's always going to be one sided from them.

 

It's difficult to get employees to understand when their paycheck depends on their not understanding.

 

This is why companies like Google is so revered. Google allows their staff to do exactly what they envision of a project, and act on it. Google listens to their staff more frequently than not. However, not all corporations will try something new. It's all structures and hierarchy.

I wish my company was more like Google even though it's a corporation.

That's on the C.E.O.

If the C.E.O. is able to inspire staff to do this, and that, it will be so. But so far, Brisco hasn't done so with the post-I.P.O staff, or post-Jelsoft acquisition.

 

On a side note, the vbulletin forums aren't loading for me, but the RSS feed is going crazy reposting the 100 beta threads.. I've disabled the feed on Admin Talk until vBulletin gets their site working correctly.

 

It isn't just you. They're not loading for me either.

 

Somebody from them used the wrong url or they included the wrong backup or cacheproblem again? whoever knows what they've done again


Many elements from them are referring to vbtest.biz

<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//IETF//DTD HTML 2.0//EN">
<html><head>
<title>404 Not Found</title>
</head><body>
<h1>Not Found</h1>
<p>The requested URL /forum/custompics/avatar/thumbs/avatar868_10.gif was not found on this server.</p>
<hr>
<address>Apache Server at www.vbtest.biz Port 80</address>
</body></html>

 

I see no avatars are working, and nothing was showing up in the editor for me.
@ProSportsForums mentioned that maybe vb5 is coming.
It would be very interesting is vb.com was running vb5...

oops.. sorry, it was another user
http://www.vbulletin.com/forum/showthread.php/416858-vbtest-biz-are-you-having-issues?p=2382637

ha.. this isn't even the right thread when you put the correct url in it.. here is their ugly .biz url
http://www.vbtest.biz/forum/showthread.php/416858-vbtest-biz-are-you-having-issues?p=2382637

 

I don't think they are brainwashed... and in fact, I think some of the support staff are quite good at their jobs.

While I'm sure there are probably some competent vBulletin developers (I mean, I would hope so since they have like 50 of them), generally speaking their code quality isn't anywhere remotely close to what I want. Would I ever let a vBulletin developer touch a single line of code I wrote? Absolutely not.

In my mind, I would just be trying to figure out what they are going to break before they broke it... it's a bit disheartening if they are the ones responsible for the underlying core of my website.

 

I wouldn't say brain-washed but it's like they're just collecting checks like it is any other job, instead of being passionate about it. When your passionate about something it shows and your more willing to be respectful I think... I've seen a lot of disrespect on there man. Maybe if vB5 wasn't such a let down it would be a better story.

 

The more work I see from the vb dev's the more I wonder if they really understand what a forum is and how it should work.

 

I see my threads asking what was disabled, was closed.
Apparently Paul M. doesn't think anything has been disabled, and he basically called me a troll for asking.

What a great support team

It's amazing, it takes several clicks (or maybe I'm not waiting for the page to load completely.. I figure 10 seconds should be enough time!) to even get to the threads I want, then I see it's closed... SMH

 

I love vb.com!
it makes me much mooooooooooore productive. (specially since it loads soo slow, that i visit it only 1,2 times per week instead of ~100 per day like in the good old vb3 times)

While i wait for https://www.vbulletin.com/forum/forum.php to load, i can open 10 other pages which i'm visiting every morning

And while i wait antother 7-40 seconds for the threads to load, i can check my other open pages.
Sometimes i'm even able to reply to 1-3 mails until all the vbulletin.com tabs finished loading

 

It's painfully apparent that vB is one of the few environments in which certain people can function. How utterly sad for them.