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I've posted this in the Conversion forum for best visibility.
Skip the summary if it's too long for you, but use this thread to discuss the future of these forums. Even if you're frustrated, please check back here to see and/or contribute to the community's future once in a while.
(Note, I have no authority, I'm just doing what I can to handle some administrative coordination by getting us all on the same page).
Crisis Summary:
1 - 3 years ago, the founder of this forum sold/gave/transferred ownership to a company called "Vertical Scope" out of Toronto. This was because he didn't have time or skill to keep it running as best he could. Vertical Scope is a brand that hosts (has bought up) dozens of mostly car-related forums. Vertical Scope committed to making daily visits, "keeping the lights on" and using their claimed technical expertise for everything to run smoothly. In exchange, they would be monetizing the forums with ads and data tracking its users.
Here is a link to the thread if you want to read more: https://www.diyelectriccar.com/forums/showthread.php?t=98898
2 - I think most people have noticed that, basically no improvements were ever done, things continued running as was, but, nothing ever got added.
3 - A little over 3 weeks ago, Vertical Scope attempted to transfer all of their forums from self-hosted to some Google hosted platform which they say was to make security and hosting easier for them. They also turned it to HTTPS instead of HTTP (the extra "S" being "Secure", or encrypted). They did this without letting anyone in our community know.
4 - Among other minor technical glitches, immediately, the last year of the database (from about July 1 2017 to July 1 2018) vanished. All threads and all content is gone.
5 - The "Garage" section here, where people document and list their builds, also vanished.
6 - Any pictures hosted from an unsecure URL (most of them) have since been blocked, historic posts too.
7 - Despite numerous attempts to contact them, no one from Vertical Scope even gave us a courtesy post/announcement to acknowledge the massive errors. No apology, no explanation, nothing, until I basically called them out and shamed them into doing so 10 days after the event. You can read the shaming thread here: https://www.diyelectriccar.com/forums/showthread.php?t=197943
8 - For those unaware, this is not how you migrate a database in the industry. This is not normal. You normally, first, inform your customers that there is a change planned and what expected outages might be, you let them know to keep an eye on issues, and you build the new site and test it *before* switching over and launching it. You ensure you have the resources on hand to deal with inevitable technical hiccups. And you certainly don't avoid talking to your customers for weeks and pretend like it's not happening. You don't bring literally very service you have offline, and just hope nothing happens.
This is kind of like being a landlord with 50 properties at the top of a hill, loading everything every one of your tenants owns into carts without asking, then pointing them at new homes at the bottom of the hill shoving them all down the hill at the same time and then saying "We couldn't have anticipated this! Please be patient, we only have 3 people to pick all this stuff up! Sorry, there's also a river down there, some of it might be gone. Oh, and your new homes are still under construction."
9 - Vertical Scope has finally acknowledged there is a problem. Their explanation is that they made this change for all their forums at the same time and don't have the technical capacity to fix anything in a timely manner, because the did it to dozens of forums at the same time, not just ours. Their solution is "please be patient we're sorry."
10 - Repeated attempts to find the answer to the question of whether they even bothered to make regular (or even just 1) backup prior to migration, have gone unanswered or been talked around. Simple yes or no answers about whether it exists have been avoided.
11 - As of the time of first posting, it's been nearly 3 weeks with zero issues fixed.
12 - Vertical Scope has taken the time to add new advertising structure to the (broken) forums.
...
Where do we go from here?:
- Who knows what technical issues are ahead, what content was lost, if it will ever come back. Regardless, can we trust Vertical Scope to continue managing this community?
- Some users are abandoning the forums temporarily.
- Some users are abandoning the forums somewhat permanently.
- Some users are calling for a migration of users to another suitable forum and abandoning this one.
- Some users are calling for a creation of a new forum to replace this one.
- Some users are calling for Vertical Scope to turn the community back over to itself to host/manage because of their not only colossal mistake, but their extraordinarily unprofessional conduct around (not) fixing it. The ownership isn't specifically clear.
...
Please Share Your Thoughts
My personal preference is to keep the momentum these forums have built over the last 10 years and to ask or shame Vertical Scope into handing it back over to run it ourselves. Several community members have volunteered to handle the technical side, and the paltry hosting expense every year could be handled by an annual hat-passing donation drive (it's only dozens or low-hundred dollars a year).
(I might edit this post in the future to clear up any misconceptions).
Skip the summary if it's too long for you, but use this thread to discuss the future of these forums. Even if you're frustrated, please check back here to see and/or contribute to the community's future once in a while.
(Note, I have no authority, I'm just doing what I can to handle some administrative coordination by getting us all on the same page).
Crisis Summary:
1 - 3 years ago, the founder of this forum sold/gave/transferred ownership to a company called "Vertical Scope" out of Toronto. This was because he didn't have time or skill to keep it running as best he could. Vertical Scope is a brand that hosts (has bought up) dozens of mostly car-related forums. Vertical Scope committed to making daily visits, "keeping the lights on" and using their claimed technical expertise for everything to run smoothly. In exchange, they would be monetizing the forums with ads and data tracking its users.
Here is a link to the thread if you want to read more: https://www.diyelectriccar.com/forums/showthread.php?t=98898
2 - I think most people have noticed that, basically no improvements were ever done, things continued running as was, but, nothing ever got added.
3 - A little over 3 weeks ago, Vertical Scope attempted to transfer all of their forums from self-hosted to some Google hosted platform which they say was to make security and hosting easier for them. They also turned it to HTTPS instead of HTTP (the extra "S" being "Secure", or encrypted). They did this without letting anyone in our community know.
4 - Among other minor technical glitches, immediately, the last year of the database (from about July 1 2017 to July 1 2018) vanished. All threads and all content is gone.
5 - The "Garage" section here, where people document and list their builds, also vanished.
6 - Any pictures hosted from an unsecure URL (most of them) have since been blocked, historic posts too.
7 - Despite numerous attempts to contact them, no one from Vertical Scope even gave us a courtesy post/announcement to acknowledge the massive errors. No apology, no explanation, nothing, until I basically called them out and shamed them into doing so 10 days after the event. You can read the shaming thread here: https://www.diyelectriccar.com/forums/showthread.php?t=197943
8 - For those unaware, this is not how you migrate a database in the industry. This is not normal. You normally, first, inform your customers that there is a change planned and what expected outages might be, you let them know to keep an eye on issues, and you build the new site and test it *before* switching over and launching it. You ensure you have the resources on hand to deal with inevitable technical hiccups. And you certainly don't avoid talking to your customers for weeks and pretend like it's not happening. You don't bring literally very service you have offline, and just hope nothing happens.
This is kind of like being a landlord with 50 properties at the top of a hill, loading everything every one of your tenants owns into carts without asking, then pointing them at new homes at the bottom of the hill shoving them all down the hill at the same time and then saying "We couldn't have anticipated this! Please be patient, we only have 3 people to pick all this stuff up! Sorry, there's also a river down there, some of it might be gone. Oh, and your new homes are still under construction."
9 - Vertical Scope has finally acknowledged there is a problem. Their explanation is that they made this change for all their forums at the same time and don't have the technical capacity to fix anything in a timely manner, because the did it to dozens of forums at the same time, not just ours. Their solution is "please be patient we're sorry."
10 - Repeated attempts to find the answer to the question of whether they even bothered to make regular (or even just 1) backup prior to migration, have gone unanswered or been talked around. Simple yes or no answers about whether it exists have been avoided.
11 - As of the time of first posting, it's been nearly 3 weeks with zero issues fixed.
12 - Vertical Scope has taken the time to add new advertising structure to the (broken) forums.
...
Where do we go from here?:
- Who knows what technical issues are ahead, what content was lost, if it will ever come back. Regardless, can we trust Vertical Scope to continue managing this community?
- Some users are abandoning the forums temporarily.
- Some users are abandoning the forums somewhat permanently.
- Some users are calling for a migration of users to another suitable forum and abandoning this one.
- Some users are calling for a creation of a new forum to replace this one.
- Some users are calling for Vertical Scope to turn the community back over to itself to host/manage because of their not only colossal mistake, but their extraordinarily unprofessional conduct around (not) fixing it. The ownership isn't specifically clear.
...
Please Share Your Thoughts
My personal preference is to keep the momentum these forums have built over the last 10 years and to ask or shame Vertical Scope into handing it back over to run it ourselves. Several community members have volunteered to handle the technical side, and the paltry hosting expense every year could be handled by an annual hat-passing donation drive (it's only dozens or low-hundred dollars a year).
(I might edit this post in the future to clear up any misconceptions).
