Zathyus Networks - 2002-2018

[Nemomon]

Maybe it's just me, but seems like TT kept their promise about messing up the CSS, because since a few days my active topics page looks pretty blank, and the "new topic" button overlaps the title of the board.

[Moonface]

Does it overlap even if you didn't modify the CSS?

[Nemomon]

Hard to say, I just looked at the logs in the ACP and it seems someone was editing CSS recently. But I can't say if they broke the style or TT did and they tried to fix it.

On a funny note, I tried to log in to ACP using my other Admin account and I got this error:

"You are not able to re-authenticate as a different user."

[Nightingale]

I loved ZB. I found within its systems a very powerful, versatile and reliable tool that allowed for a ton of fun experiments and that users had an unusually easy time getting used to. I'm truly sad to see it go.

That said...

The level of panic and disrespect inflicted on us by Winter Wong and TaT are sure to become a very bitter memory that I don't think it's ever truly going away. I'm shaking just thinking about what would have happened to the combined 17 years of foruimg we did if we didn't have a programmer amongst our ranks.

Screw you, TAT.

[Moonface]

PSA: It seems that any files hosted on ZB are no longer working with their ZB URL's. I just noticed it upon hard refreshing a page and seeing my signature shot to pieces. That means you need to use a Tapatalk URL to have them work again, although it's probably better to just host the stuff somewhere else.

[macGamr]

Sorry to bring this up after over a month but, ZB will be sorely missed, even if it became a broken piece of crap over time (and I actually regret using it again, if I'm honest).

[queenzelda]

I um, am kind of glad it's gone tbh. I mean s1 zb was great, but if you made another zb forum for whatever reason, some of the other ones on other servers like mine which was on s15, was down a LOT. So, I don't miss that. I do however miss the people & community: that I miss. The carpy server not so much.

[macGamr]

but if you made another zb forum for whatever reason, some of the other ones on other servers like mine which was on s15, was down a LOT.

Servers 4, 7 and 11 suffered the same also but even at that, Server 1 had its bouts of downtime back in the day (and I know because my first ever forum was hosted on it).

[queenzelda]

but if you made another zb forum for whatever reason, some of the other ones on other servers like mine which was on s15, was down a LOT.

Servers 4, 7 and 11 suffered the same also but even at that, Server 1 had its bouts of downtime back in the day (and I know because my first ever forum was hosted on it).

Yea, but s1 wasn't down nearly as often, impo. Lol

[Moonface]

S1 was bad but not as much as 4, 7, 11 and 15. That was something we all hoped would go away when TT took over as at the time we thought ZB would just move as a software onto their servers.

I agree about missing the community, and I liked getting to look at boards via the ticket system that may have been unknown by a lot of people. I still find it ridiculous that Brandon never thanked anyone for their time, including Stephen as far as I'm aware. TT or not, that's entirely his failing and made me lose respect for him.

[lp0 on fire]

Psshhh, ya'll never knew the horror that was S13 (IF)

FML that was a horrible server.

[Moonface]

So, I didn't realise it's been a year since Zathyus Networks finally bit the dust, and I wrote up this in response to it elsewhere that I'll share here because I think it's a good eye opener to how things were going down.

---

It was a year ago ZB merged into TT, and it wasn't even a year prior that Brandon announced TT owned the network and that things would improve for ZB as a software, not get worse:

June 13th, 2017
Brandon announces to the staff team that the network is now owned by Tapatalk:

ZetaBoards, zIFBoards, and InvisionFree are now part of Tapatalk. . . . [A]fter discussing with Tapatalk I realized they can provide an excellent path forward for ZetaBoards. ZetaBoards will flourish best with access to quality servers, CloudFlare Enterprise, and my focused attention on development.

 . . . 

We will gain some staff to help with abuse reports, support, and server monitoring/maintenance. This means I will be able to fully focus on development.

This spawned many questions. We wondered if the paid TT staff would be doing the same jobs as us, but being paid to do it while we were not. We were told they would replace Brian, as he departed from the service upon this announcement to pursue other ventures. Two TT staff were given staff spots on the ZB support forum, and neither of them provided support. It took criticism from the staff about a lack of even an introduction to get so much as a howdy from Chris, and if memory serves, it was the first and last we interacted with them or any other TT staff member directly on the support forum. I'd say they helped with abuse reports, but there were a lot of times boards were closed for not breaking ToS that we had to deal with, so even when TT did attempt to help us, I think they made our lives harder.

We also wondered what would happen in the event ZB was merged into TT, as Brandon wouldn't have the final call on that sort of situation if TT absolutely wanted to do that. We were assured the following:

If anything I'd expect a better ability to export data out. I think they truly understand that board owners are concerned about the accessibility of their data.

I think it's clear that whether they understood or not, data accessibility was not their concern.

At the time, Brandon didn't even believe ZB would end up knocking on deaths door less than a year later:

I would not let anyone take over ZB if I did not feel it made ZB's future more secure. I really truly do not believe this is just an experiment for Tapatalk and I think they will respect my judgement if I say something is not a good idea for ZB.

While browsing this same thread, I came across this interesting snippet of a plan that never managed to happen for whatever reason:

To reduce my workload InvisionFree/zIFBoards will convert into ZetaBoards and phpBB 3.2 (a board owner will be able to pick).

I'm not sure if maybe the latter option was meaning TT, but I don't know what they run specifically nor care to check.

Nothing else of particular note occurs, except that non-staff begin noticing TT appearing on sales receipts, which led to a public announcement happening around the end of July.

October 8th, 2017
zIF boards suddenly begin receiving TT previews without any prior warning, surprising even staff. Obvious panic ensues, and since the cat can't go back in the bag, the situation simply has to be brought under control. Since activity has been mentioned in this thread regarding boards that converted to TT, here's an amusing quote from Brandon:

. . . feedback I've seen from those networks has been surprisingly good. Boards are more active after the switch.

The networks referred to here are any that TT had assimilated prior to acquiring Zathyus. Not much really happens behind the scenes that's of note for this incident, but I wanted to include it as part of the timeline of events that happened behind closed doors.

January 9th, 2018
Brandon announces a ZB update to the staff, with some new features and bug fixes. It's nothing major, and I don't recall if it went live publicly or not. No announcement was made publicly for it, so either it got sneaked out the door or we never saw it go live. Hard to find out for sure with no ZB boards to check for signs of it. Still, the point of this was to show Brandon at this stage is still working on ZB and was aiming to push out things that were ready to go.

April 19th, 2018
Brandon announces to staff that ZB is done, and will be merging into an updated TT Groups. The short and happy version of the announcement was the best of ZB going into TT Groups, and then the planned features for ZB being added onto it at a faster rate due to a better developmental environment. Brandon admits that the current software lacks the features that ZB has, but that they will be added in the coming weeks. Kicked off by yours truly, outrage and shock erupts among the staff at the sudden announcement. The typical questions arise. What about databases? What about the users who just moved from IF to ZB to avoid TT to now be forced into TT anyway, when they would have likely paid for a database had they known the corner they would be backed into. I think Stephen put it best:

Frankly, you have shattered what trust is left and alienated what's left of your customer base. You have made liars out of all of us and destroyed our credibility.

You were asked about this multiple times for over a year and denied or flat out lied to us.

Of course, more or less everyone had some golden nugget of feedback to give Brandon:

Some of us have been around defending you for well over a decade, we had your back time after time you aliened your volunteers and your users. 

We told users IF2 would be released "soon", only it wasn't (yes I know part of it was needed to go from InvisionPower to scratch) 
We told users ZB would be great and feature rich, only to have a vast amount of the features not be there or broken for time immortal 
Hell back before ZB was released, I was holding off on some projects because of the features of ZB (only to have those features never be made despite being advertised as "core" features). 
We charged users for features that never came to be (e.g. RD 
We told users that they could use IF forever, and we thought it was true then, only to have our words turned to lies. 
We told users that TaT would only bring good things to ZetaBoards, only to have it killed off. 
And a million other times we were midlead by you and in turn we mislead our users.

You had our trust even though time after time we were lied to, we were mislead. I am enraged by this latest development, I dedicated over 13 years to this, in time, in resources. 

 

So ZB never flourished, data exports outright disappeared if ZB met this fate, and ZB met that fate within a year.

If we had the impression that the best and popular parts of ZB were merging into a new TTG platform, maybe this wouldn't be such a hard pill to swallow. However, we don't have that nor anything to convince us that will happen.

 

They aren't coming along with you to Taptalk if you do this; you are making that journey alone and many people will hate your guts.

 . . . 

You're just moving SQL records at that point, not active users.

But hey, apparently it won't be all bad. Brandon has a plan!

Basically the timeline is:
1. The best and popular parts of ZB are merging into TTG. During the same time period previews of ZB forums on TTG will become available. This will let us get feedback on anything we missed and keep the focus on popular parts of ZB.
2. Popular/active boards can schedule a call or meeting to discuss the move.
3. TTG begins gaining ZB 2.0 type features that I have been working on.
4. ZB begins to move to TTG.

Of course, we've seen so far from what I've wrote that planning doesn't seem to actually go anywhere except backwards. Brandon also makes it clear that not every ZB feature will be in TT on day one. Not to the degree we saw in the end, but what we're told isn't making it is enough to keep the fires burning. Why move everyone before things are finished when it will blatantly cause people to leave en masse and damage communities that do choose to remain? There didn't appear to be any sign of the move being urgent for any good reasons, so do it properly, especially when so far, nothing about the TT merge has gone smoothly due to rush jobs, dropping the ball, or things being noticeable to the public before they were intended to be public knowledge.

May 7th, 2018
Suddenly, without so much as a warning or a sign, Brandon publicly announces the news that ZB is merging into TT. Issues regarding the matter haven't even been resolved amongst the staff, and the staff don't even have all the answers to their questions, so imagine how wonderful it was to log in to dozens of ZB users going absolutely crazy about this sudden pipe bomb of an announcement. Oh, and it also lacks any of the answers staff were given. Wondering if features like CSS and JS are going to be included? Well once again, the staff are the ones having to answer these questions because Brandon failed to put them in the announcement. The same staff who for a year have been making claims that Brandon showed to be lies. It's amazing anyone even wanted to listen to a word we had to say, but the bright side was the community saw the lies weren't of our own making.

Within less than a week of the announcement, test boards start going live, again with no warning. It hardly helps the situation. TT staff make minimal efforts to answer the public, with one claiming Brandon has been working hard to take care of everyone. I argue that if he was going to be busy doing that, to not claim in his own announcement to answer questions and then ghost the entire community. Staff responses that follow are increasingly cynical, as you would expect.

From this date onwards, communication with Brandon essentially ceases to exist. All of ZB's userbase, staff or not, are in the dark unless Brandon or a TT staff member answers in the public thread regarding the situation. In June we get told by Brandon he will be making phone calls personally to the administrators of the top 50 ZB boards and ZB staff to discuss the move and address any questions. A few of the staff question why not answer everybody at once in the public thread he said he would address, rather than cherry pick people out. I have no idea if the calls ever happened, but I think it's safe to say they probably didn't.

Questions still arise from all fronts with little answers to dwell the fires. The last communication from Brandon to staff was in July, with very little of note except a justification for the merging of Zathyus into TT:

I personally loaned a lot of money to Zathyus to keep ZB/zIF open and running over the last few years. After Tapatalk took over our existing main ad network became financially unstable (as a company) and stopped paying on time (think 6-9 month delay in paying out). ZB is alive today because of Tapatalk, no ifs ands or buts.

Staff responses didn't really improve. Stephen points out that everyone on staff has given something to ZB and Brandon fails to acknowledge that (evidenced by a complete lack of a thank you to a single person on the staff regardless of tenure), and that once again we're being left in the dark and told details at the eleventh hour when we could have tried to help had we known earlier, and if Brandon for once was to actually accept help beyond what the staff had already been giving him.

Shortly after, ZB reaches its end and the events of the past year take place that lead to today.

[Dragon Lord]

I find the party where he talks about seeing more boards active because of TT, meanwhile every single board I visited became a ghost town after the announcement. Like, a forum I'm on that had over 1,000,000 posts and was still decently active, had been around since like 2006 or 2008 became completely inactive after they were converted over to TT.

He obviously had no idea what he was talking about and was just saying what TT told him to say.

[Moonface]

I'd be shocked if even the L_Chat board remained active, and that was so active Brandon actively avoided reprimanding it for ToS violations because of the amount of traffic it generated. He never made any such claim, but I know that was a board that got special treatment when it came to the ToS, and I fail to see why else other than it brought in money for the network.