I originally posted this here, at the Let's Yuku It board, in
December, and I updated it last month. I thought I'd go ahead and update it once more and post it in this blog.
THE GOOD:
1) Profiles -- having MySpace-like profiles was never high on my list of priorities (it was never actually on my list of priorities), but I do like the way they've turned out.
2) The WYSIWYG editor -- it's helpful for those of us who either don't know how to customize profile/board skins or know just enough to be very dangerous.
3) The skins libraries -- both the designer libraries and custom libraries for our own skins are a good idea and make it easier to customize profiles and boards.
4) The posting box/form -- it works very much like a word processing program, so if you can use word processing programs, you can post at yuku, and you don't have to know or use ezboard/message board codes. But for those who prefer BB codes, that format is available as well.
5) No frequent logouts -- I don't get logged out half a dozen times a day here, as I did at ezboard...moving from forum to forum, or from my navigation area back to a board, or from board to board, or when I try to make a post. Mind you, I am being logged out from time to time. But the problems is far less troublesome here than it was at ezboard.
6) Image hosting -- it's crap for certain kinds of animations, but overall it's a convenient feature.
7) RSS links -- for those who use them.
8) The hide/show posts and threads feature -- something that ezboard did not have.
9) The merge/split threads feature -- as I recall, this was something that ezboard users had wanted for quire some time...it's definitely a convenient feature.
10) Unlimited pages -- the last page of threads doesn't get automatically deleted after 20 pages in a forum, as it did at ezboard.
11) Board administration -- while it is more complicated than board administration at ezboard, there are more features available to board owners at yuku than there were at ezboard.
12) OK, this is incredibly stupid, and maybe I'm the only dork amused by it...but I like the fact that I can do this
with this!
13) Kudos -- hey, some people really love them!
The Bad:
1) The continuing problems with Chat -- this is a feature that's touted as being "improved"...improved compared to what? And some yuku staff members dismiss chat as not being very important, which is a real shame because it's very important for some boards.
2) Questions from certain yuku members (such as myself), who are known to offer constructive criticism about yuku, tend to be ignored by yuku staff despite their denials of this practice.
3) Concerns from users who do not sing yuku's praises -- i.e., those who complain or offer constructive criticism -- are often dismissed as not being important, not being a big deal, and/or being the fault of the user rather than yuku...if they're responsed to at all (see above).
4) Yuku can't even decide whether or not the Lobby is a help forum. It is, then it isn't, then it is, then it isn't. Not having an official help forum at a board called "Support" is completely illogical.
5) Yuku wasted time creating a game for the error 404 page when they should have been focusing on more important things like actually finishing the important and necessary features of the system and removing the bugs...yuku developers also wasted time creating the ridiculous kudos Hall of Fame, instead of working on getting all of the necessary features out and working properly...creating things like the error 404 game and the Hall of Fame would have been a perfectly fine way to pass the time once yuku was finished, but not before...it's like building a new house and putting in new furniture before the drywall and been installed and the walls have been painted.
6) Users' inability to delete unwanted profiles -- up late 2006 or so, there was a link in our navigation area that allowed users to delete unwanted profiles (e.g., test profiles), but that link has long since been removed. Yuku staff has been claiming for months that this feature will return "soon," but it's been unavailable for so long that I don't know why they even bother to keep saying it's not available "right now."
7) The inability of board owners to delete boards (which was also a problem at ezboard) -- I have investigated a handful of other message board systems, and all of them allow users to delete their accounts and their boards
8) The media block in profiles, and the ability to post media (video and audio) in threads -- this must be dreadful for dial-up users, or anyone with a slow internet connection.
9) Slowness, topics/posts not appearing, and white pages -- yuku is supposed to be an upgrade from ezboard...but it certainly doesn't seem like an upgrade.
10) Ads appearing inside posts -- would it kill yuku to put the ads at the top and bottom of boards?!
11) Sexually oriented ads -- not everyone wants an ad for sexy Arab girls or a gay men's dating site to show up on their boards or in their profiles.
12) Kudos -- some people really hate them!
The Ugly:
1) Yuku missed its targeted "ready for prime time" date by a year (perhaps because the developers have been too busy playing with the toys they created rather than actually working on the fundamentals of the system?).
2) There is still absolutely no mention whatsoever of a feature that will enable board owners to back up their board data to their own computers, despite this feature being highly touted -- and highly desired -- after the 5/31/2005 ezboard crash hack. This feature doesn't even appear on the Feature Voter list despite the fact that I and others have "suggested" it multiple times. Since it was promised to us by yuku's previous owner, the current owners may decide not to give us this feature after all. And considering the fact that there's no evidence it's even being considered, I think it's a safe bet that we'll never get it.
3) Yuku prefers only happy talk on its official help boards. Threads in the Lobby forum that contain complaints (even the polite ones) are often locked, hidden, or deleted. And I've just discovered that the same is true for the Get Help board.
4) The censorship issue that reared its ugly head about a year ago -- any and all links (text or image) to message board systems other than yuku or ezboard were disabled...even URLs to other systems were not clickable. Furthermore, PMs sent with links to message board systems other then yuku/ezboard were returned as "failed delivery." I asked about this in the Bug forum (don't bother looking for the thread; it's been deleted...ditto for my thread at Get Help), and the official response -- from Ransom at the Bug forum -- to this issue was, "It was in our stopwords somehow." Somehow? Apparently, the staff member who posted that response assumed that users would actually believe that the censorship was done accidentally. We didn't. This blatant censorship was the straw that broke the camel's back for me...it killed my enthusiasm for yuku (which was actually once quite strong) and drove me to move my board from ezboard to another message board system.
5) The fact that it took yuku two years to finally announce its price structure for "yuku supporter" or "gold" boards at yuku. It's really quite mind-boggling that it took yuku so long to work this out.
6) The extraordinarily complicated and confusing price structure for gold boards. Surely, the person who came up with it must have been drunk or high at the time he or she came up with those pricing plans.
7) The forced migrations of some ezboards to yuku, without a request from, and little or no warning to, the board owner. Yuku has a right to begin migrating boards en masse, but they owe their customers the courtesy of an official announcement at ezboard to notify all board owners of this change in policy. To begin these forced migrations without giving such notice is a shameful way to treat customers.
THE GOOD:
1) Profiles -- having MySpace-like profiles was never high on my list of priorities (it was never actually on my list of priorities), but I do like the way they've turned out.
2) The WYSIWYG editor -- it's helpful for those of us who either don't know how to customize profile/board skins or know just enough to be very dangerous.
3) The skins libraries -- both the designer libraries and custom libraries for our own skins are a good idea and make it easier to customize profiles and boards.
4) The posting box/form -- it works very much like a word processing program, so if you can use word processing programs, you can post at yuku, and you don't have to know or use ezboard/message board codes. But for those who prefer BB codes, that format is available as well.
5) No frequent logouts -- I don't get logged out half a dozen times a day here, as I did at ezboard...moving from forum to forum, or from my navigation area back to a board, or from board to board, or when I try to make a post. Mind you, I am being logged out from time to time. But the problems is far less troublesome here than it was at ezboard.
6) Image hosting -- it's crap for certain kinds of animations, but overall it's a convenient feature.
7) RSS links -- for those who use them.
8) The hide/show posts and threads feature -- something that ezboard did not have.
9) The merge/split threads feature -- as I recall, this was something that ezboard users had wanted for quire some time...it's definitely a convenient feature.
10) Unlimited pages -- the last page of threads doesn't get automatically deleted after 20 pages in a forum, as it did at ezboard.
11) Board administration -- while it is more complicated than board administration at ezboard, there are more features available to board owners at yuku than there were at ezboard.
12) OK, this is incredibly stupid, and maybe I'm the only dork amused by it...but I like the fact that I can do this
with this
!
13) Kudos -- hey, some people really love them!
The Bad:
1) The continuing problems with Chat -- this is a feature that's touted as being "improved"...improved compared to what? And some yuku staff members dismiss chat as not being very important, which is a real shame because it's very important for some boards.
2) Questions from certain yuku members (such as myself), who are known to offer constructive criticism about yuku, tend to be ignored by yuku staff despite their denials of this practice.
3) Concerns from users who do not sing yuku's praises -- i.e., those who complain or offer constructive criticism -- are often dismissed as not being important, not being a big deal, and/or being the fault of the user rather than yuku...if they're responsed to at all (see above).
4) Yuku can't even decide whether or not the Lobby is a help forum. It is, then it isn't, then it is, then it isn't. Not having an official help forum at a board called "Support" is completely illogical.
5) Yuku wasted time creating a game for the error 404 page when they should have been focusing on more important things like actually finishing the important and necessary features of the system and removing the bugs...yuku developers also wasted time creating the ridiculous kudos Hall of Fame, instead of working on getting all of the necessary features out and working properly...creating things like the error 404 game and the Hall of Fame would have been a perfectly fine way to pass the time once yuku was finished, but not before...it's like building a new house and putting in new furniture before the drywall and been installed and the walls have been painted.
6) Users' inability to delete unwanted profiles -- up late 2006 or so, there was a link in our navigation area that allowed users to delete unwanted profiles (e.g., test profiles), but that link has long since been removed. Yuku staff has been claiming for months that this feature will return "soon," but it's been unavailable for so long that I don't know why they even bother to keep saying it's not available "right now."
7) The inability of board owners to delete boards (which was also a problem at ezboard) -- I have investigated a handful of other message board systems, and all of them allow users to delete their accounts and their boards
8) The media block in profiles, and the ability to post media (video and audio) in threads -- this must be dreadful for dial-up users, or anyone with a slow internet connection.
9) Slowness, topics/posts not appearing, and white pages -- yuku is supposed to be an upgrade from ezboard...but it certainly doesn't seem like an upgrade.
10) Ads appearing inside posts -- would it kill yuku to put the ads at the top and bottom of boards?!
11) Sexually oriented ads -- not everyone wants an ad for sexy Arab girls or a gay men's dating site to show up on their boards or in their profiles.
12) Kudos -- some people really hate them!
The Ugly:
1) Yuku missed its targeted "ready for prime time" date by a year (perhaps because the developers have been too busy playing with the toys they created rather than actually working on the fundamentals of the system?).
2) There is still absolutely no mention whatsoever of a feature that will enable board owners to back up their board data to their own computers, despite this feature being highly touted -- and highly desired -- after the 5/31/2005 ezboard crash hack. This feature doesn't even appear on the Feature Voter list despite the fact that I and others have "suggested" it multiple times. Since it was promised to us by yuku's previous owner, the current owners may decide not to give us this feature after all. And considering the fact that there's no evidence it's even being considered, I think it's a safe bet that we'll never get it.
3) Yuku prefers only happy talk on its official help boards. Threads in the Lobby forum that contain complaints (even the polite ones) are often locked, hidden, or deleted. And I've just discovered that the same is true for the Get Help board.
4) The censorship issue that reared its ugly head about a year ago -- any and all links (text or image) to message board systems other than yuku or ezboard were disabled...even URLs to other systems were not clickable. Furthermore, PMs sent with links to message board systems other then yuku/ezboard were returned as "failed delivery." I asked about this in the Bug forum (don't bother looking for the thread; it's been deleted...ditto for my thread at Get Help), and the official response -- from Ransom at the Bug forum -- to this issue was, "It was in our stopwords somehow." Somehow? Apparently, the staff member who posted that response assumed that users would actually believe that the censorship was done accidentally. We didn't. This blatant censorship was the straw that broke the camel's back for me...it killed my enthusiasm for yuku (which was actually once quite strong) and drove me to move my board from ezboard to another message board system.
5) The fact that it took yuku two years to finally announce its price structure for "yuku supporter" or "gold" boards at yuku. It's really quite mind-boggling that it took yuku so long to work this out.
6) The extraordinarily complicated and confusing price structure for gold boards. Surely, the person who came up with it must have been drunk or high at the time he or she came up with those pricing plans.
7) The forced migrations of some ezboards to yuku, without a request from, and little or no warning to, the board owner. Yuku has a right to begin migrating boards en masse, but they owe their customers the courtesy of an official announcement at ezboard to notify all board owners of this change in policy. To begin these forced migrations without giving such notice is a shameful way to treat customers.
Last edited by: DiamondDiva 03/14/08 22:13:07.
Edited 1 times.
