Zathyus Networks - 2002-2018

[Moonface]

With the official support forum now converted to Tapatalk, and migrations being completed by September 27th, I think it's safe to say that Zathyus Networks as an entity has ceased to be as of yesterday. Obviously a surprise to no one, but it was around for 16 years as InvisionFree and ZetaBoards. I know most if not all of you here have used it in some form in the past, so share all of your memories or pet peeves from your time using it. Mentioning boards by name you remember is acceptable except for doing it to advertise or rip into a community. If you want to criticise something you experienced on another board, refrain from naming it.

Since it's the most recent and relevant thing, I'm just going to share my final thoughts on the Tapatalk matter.

It was handled poorly from the start, although the choice was either ZB moves to TT, or it shuts down. Those were pretty much the options on Brandon's table and he went with the one that would, in some way, allow communities to continue rather than lose everything. I personally think that it would've been better to offer databases, which is clearly possible because all the ZB boards went to TT and that runs on phpBB. So the claim over the years that ZB's databases aren't compatible with other softwares feels like bullshit to me now that they've been moved to a different software. From the instant the announcement was made, Brandon pretty much disappeared. I don't think he even bothered to thank the staff or the users for their support in his project over the years. A lot of what made ZN great was the resources made by the users, which are now essentially all redundant and were thankless efforts from the developer who's software they were made for. IcyBoard's closing just before the ZB announcement shows how to properly handle the situation. That was all done by one person, so Brandon has no excuse for his behaviour, which wasn't anything new in the first place.

[lp0 on fire]

13 years of blood sweat and tears down the drain.
13 years of passion and countless hours spent there down the drain.
13 years of trying to get Brandon to improve communication
So many people I met so many people I haven't talked to in years.
So much happened in my life in those 13 years.

Not even a thank you from Brandon.

[Moonface]

Do we even know if Brandon ever dealt with those outstanding sales tickets from people who had paid for IF databases and had yet to hear back from him?

[lp0 on fire]

I have no idea.

[Dragon Lord]

Honestly not that sad about it. Never really cared for IF/ZB. I only used them because they were free, and I stuck around communities that used them because of the people and not the software. It was more sad to see how it was handled rather than knowing that ZB was no longer going to exist.

I'm actually glad it happened though, because we get to really see how much better it is not being on ZB. Not only for this forum, but for many others that moved to other forum platforms after the TT announcement.

[Moonface]

The only reason I really ended up using IF/ZB was because the first board I joined was hosted on IF, and then EL made a board on IF that would evolve into this place. Although I honestly can't think of what other free forum hosts were around back in 2004.

[lp0 on fire]

Honestly not that sad about it. Never really cared for IF/ZB. I only used them because they were free, and I stuck around communities that used them because of the people and not the software. It was more sad to see how it was handled rather than knowing that ZB was no longer going to exist.

I'm actually glad it happened though, because we get to really see how much better it is not being on ZB. Not only for this forum, but for many others that moved to other forum platforms after the TT announcement.

Some how... ZB actually did a good amount of things right, When I was playing around with some other software it was just bad in many aspects including myBB. Warn Logs and Multitools were great on ZB, myBB is a different story

phpBB is still trash though.

[fantanoice]

Although I honestly can't think of what other free forum hosts were around back in 2004.

Ezboard and Forumer come to mind.

The situation was handled poorly, that's for sure. Sad to see Zetaboards die like this, I liked the software during the time I was using it and I'd recommend it to anyone who didn't want to deal with self hosting.

I don't even know if Tapatalk is that bad of a platform (I liked the mobile app they used to have) but after all this bad communication I can understand why nobody would want to continue with them.

[lp0 on fire]

Although I honestly can't think of what other free forum hosts were around back in 2004.

Ezboard and Forumer come to mind.

The situation was handled poorly, that's for sure. Sad to see Zetaboards die like this, I liked the software during the time I was using it and I'd recommend it to anyone who didn't want to deal with self hosting.

I don't even know if Tapatalk is that bad of a platform (I liked the mobile app they used to have) but after all this bad communication I can understand why nobody would want to continue with them.

Fuck tapatalk, they are going in and deleting posts and members with out reason,warning or anything. Winter is just a fucking authoritarian who can't handle criticism, I hope tapatalk has a quick and painful death.

[fantanoice]

Where are they deleting the posts/members from?

[lp0 on fire]

They removed a post by Nicolas saying we can no longer give support on the board, with out warning because it contained something they didn't like. They banned a member in good standing for no reason.

On their support board they do not have a list of rules or anything that members are expected to follow, and will do ad hoc moderation by just randomly deleting posts and topics for no reason and leaving others up.

Its so bad they will remove a post, but keep the post right below it that quotes that post.

I was a better moderator my first day on the job then Howdy/chris/et al have been in the years they were there <_<.

You can not expect to have any set of rules or laws work if they are made ad hoc, not made easily and readily available to those that it effects, and if they are so vague it can be anything. This is a huge failure that will cause any community to fall apart. This topic has been talked about in both political and legal philosophy, in actual practice, and in other things. Such as the downfall of major forums and communities. Most often people who do these things are either 1) inexperienced and/or 2) Power hungry, although there is a rarer 3rd one, "thought the wrong things worked in previous experiences)

Given Winter Wong founding TapATalk in china (before being moved to the US) and his past experiences with IBM and HP (both of which have been cluster fucks in the past few decades, see Queensland Health, the Canadian Phoenix Project, and the Swedish government data leak as notable examples) I think its a mix of 2 and 3. China has a very "fuck if I care" attitude in general when it comes to business (and the Communist Party loving to insert it self in to business affairs of seemingly every decent sized company in China), and these moderation actions which are just authoritarian in nature concerns me, about the future of Tap, their actual objectives, and what the hell they will be doing with 14 years worth of my data.

[Moonface]

In my experience I have found Tapatalk to be overly strict, and their load times to be terrible. Server reliability also seems worse than ZB's ever was, considering I have yet to go a full day without encountering one on the converted ZB support forum.

Personally, I think ZB might have died earlier if database exports were a provided service. I know that had it been available, I'd have likely left the network a couple of years ago or at the very latest, when Tapatalk purchased the network.

[lp0 on fire]

In my experience I have found Tapatalk to be overly strict, and their load times to be terrible. Server reliability also seems worse than ZB's ever was, considering I have yet to go a full day without encountering one on the converted ZB support forum.

Personally, I think ZB might have died earlier if database exports were a provided service. I know that had it been available, I'd have likely left the network a couple of years ago or at the very latest, when Tapatalk purchased the network.

Pre buyout I don't think it would have been dead, there are plenty of people who 1)Wouldn't want to pay for hosting/the back up if it wasn't needed 2) can't tell http from https etc and find even shared hosting "too hard".

After the TT buyout, yeah it would have died very quickly after it was shown how bad TT is.

[Moonface]

True. I expect it would've been a good revenue generator though, since ZB Premium certainly can't have been with the piss poor things it had to offer, some of which didn't even work. I've never really been sure what could've made it worth the $80 a year either.

[lp0 on fire]

Depending on the size of your site, (IIRC) you basically got 50% ad removal for 80/yr or at lease that is how it was at some point.

But honestly if Brandon got some actual devs (and maybe a person to handle the physical hardware and (D)DoS issues) ZB would have been better off.