Failing Enterprise Blog 2005-03

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The Admin talks about our online community

Friday, March 25th, 2005

The new Discussion Board seems to be working just fine.  As of half an hour ago, there were 23 simultaneous users!  To quote the closing line from one of my favorite movies (Monster's Ball), "I think we're going to be alright."

It looks like Enterprise has launched their first moderate-sized attack against free speech and the open, public discussion of their ongoing problems here, and we survived just fine.  Not only did we survive, but  we're now in a much stronger position to grow our community and resist similar attacks in the future.

Thanks for all your positive feedback about the site and the new Discussion Board.

I've got a couple of interesting ideas for new features that I may be able to roll out in the next few weeks.  Your ideas and suggestions are always welcome.

Enjoy the new Discussion Board.

Thursday, March 24th, 2005 (10:00 PM)

Free at last!  Free at last!

Thank God Almighty, we are free at last!

-- Martin Luther King, in his "I Have A Dream" speech

The new Discussion Board is at last up and running.  I had to get a few things done to make it work, but you can now all go back to getting your daily fix of free and open discussion about the ongoing problems at Enterprise Rent-A-Car.

I've moved the web site over to a Class A data center owned by Bay Area Internet Solutions, our Internet Service Provider.  I've been a customer there for nine years (!), as well as a consultant and friend of the owner.  I've always been very happy with their service and I refer new customers to them whenever I get the chance.

The site is running on a virtual web server on a Linux box configured with Plesk Reloaded.  Of course, it has the usual useful functionality included, like an Apache web server and support for MySQL and PHP.

For the Discussion Board, I'm using vBulletin.  It seems to be mature and stable, and they helped me to import all existing threads and messages from my old Discussion Board at ezBoard.  All the messages came over and it's looking pretty good.  Unfortunately, it wasn't possible to bring over the user accounts.

I'm sure there will still be lots of tweaking and configuring to do, but I think I've got the basics down.

This new setup will give us several benefits:

• We will no longer be subject to what I consider to be spinelessness and overreaction by ezBoard.  They seemed far too willing, upon receiving their very first complaint, to fold up like a cheap suit and sell out their customer, closing down the board without even extending me the courtesy of a single phone call or e-mail message.
• We can, and have, prepared our own Terms Of Use for the site and Discussion Board.  My Internet and Intellectual Property attorney and I have prepared this to meet our own specific needs.
• Web traffic to the main site will no longer have to fit through the bandwidth constraints of my commercial-grade DSL line.  By hosting in this data center, with its multiple OC48 (2.45 Gb/s) fiber links to multiple carriers, the site can handle all the "spiky" traffic the world can throw at us, like when we were listed as the "Cruel Site Of The Day" last summer (I don't think we're being cruel at all, except for that nagging problem that sometimes the truth hurts), or when we got mentioned in Newsweek.
• The scaling problems we were beginning to notice at ezBoard also won't be a problem any longer.  At this point, all the infrastructure is fully capable of scaling up to handle traffic that increases by an additional factor of 10 or 100, and I'll no longer be holding back on new features for fear of getting too much traffic.  At this point, we're ready for some serious growth.  Sure, we get 7,000 page views per day, but I think the scope of the public service we could provide is much, much larger than this.
• I'll be able to manage the site and the Discussion Board much better while I'm traveling.

In conclusion, the net result of all this is that we sloughed off a service provider that couldn't keep up with us, got a new custom Discussion Board to meet our needs, and have greatly improved our capacity to continue our remarkable growth.  It's too bad that the Discussion Board went down for nine days, but we're back in the saddle again.

To use a phrase that dozens of former Enterprise employees have told me they never, ever, want to hear again, Here We Grow Again!

Be sure to read, understand, and accept our Terms Of Use.

It's good to be back.  Go forth and message your hearts out.  Free speech is a good thing, and we need more of it.

Thursday, March 24th, 2005 (10:00 AM)

The ezBoard Discussion Board is still temporarily in read-only mode.  I know this is a major burden for members of our community because I'm getting all your e-mails.  I sympathize with your withdrawal pains.

I'm working away here to get a permanent solution to the problem.  At this point, I'm waiting for my attorney to get back to me with advice on our new Terms Of Use, for the global DNS system to propagate a change in our DNS records, and for a developer of our new Discussion Board software to complete the importing of all our messages to a new in-house Discussion Board.  I still expect it all to be up and running by end of the day tomorrow.

I'm eager to get a permanent solution to these issues so I can go back to taking good care of our community members and continue to grow our traffic.

Wednesday, March 23rd, 2005

I just received an e-mail from ezBoard.  They're still unhappy with some of the messages on the Discussion Board.  They found other instances of someone signing their anonymous messages as "Greg Stubblefield" in some topics not mentioned in Enterprise's e-mail to me.  I wasn't aware of these messages.

As a result, I've made the board read-only (to post now requires you be registered and have a password, and I'm not giving out the password).  I've also promised to search through all the topics by the end of the day, and delete every message signed by any of the names that I'm aware of.

Within a few days, I plan to migrate all the messages off the board to one that I can host in-house.

Sorry, but ezBoard has their Terms Of Use and they're not satisfied with my policy of responding promptly and thoroughly to complaints.

I hope to have things working smoothly on another Discussion Board by the end of the week.

Tuesday, March 22nd, 2005

It's been another busy day dealing with the Discussion Board issues.  As of today, ezBoard turned the board back on.  Since Enterprise had provided me with a detailed list of 74 topics in which they felt posters on the board had violated ezBoard's Terms Of Use, I went through each of these topics, in detail, and redacted names and deleted postings that appeared to come from someone impersonating someone else, like "Greg Stubblefield", for example.  I got back to ezBoard with my detailed notes and hopefully the board now meets their requirements.

I've also edited the Legal Notices page to mention that anyone using the board is of course also subject to ezBoard's Terms Of Use.  Then I added a permanent topic to each of the forums in which I again reminded users of their obligation to follow the ezBoard Terms Of Use.

I also got back to the lawyer at Enterprise with a thorough response (as I had promised) to her list of concerns.

So, the Discussion Board is back up, and this is definitely good news.  I'll know more about migrating to different board software in another day or two.

Monday, March 21st., 2005

It's been a busy day recovering from Enterprise's sneak attack last week.  I've secured a virtual web server at a premium Class-A Internet data center with multiple OC48 (2.45 Gb/s) fiber links to multiple carriers and I hope to move the site over within a day or so.  I've also researched and more or less decided on discussion board software to load on the server so that I don't have to be reliant on a third party board host.  My Internet and Intellectual Property attorney and I are finalizing the Terms Of Use we'll implement on the site and the board.  Lastly, I'm continuing to try to work with ezBoard to unlock my existing board so that I may look at the postings that Enterprise had concerns about and respond appropriately.  I may have to delete some messages in order to meet the requirements of their Terms Of Use.

It could still be a couple of days before things are back to normal.

I'm definitely looking forward to having our discussion board up and running again!  Thanks for all your continued e-mails telling me how much you miss it.  It really is an important focal point for our community.

Also, I keep getting more fan mail messages.  I've posted the new ones on the site.

Sunday, March 20th, 2005

As you've probably noticed, we've had some recent excitement here at Failing Enterprise.  On Friday, March 11th, an attorney at Enterprise sent me a list of posts on our Discussion Board that she felt violated our Discussion Board host's (ezBoard) Terms of Use.  I had spoken with this attorney on the phone and explained that I would be out of town all last week (Sunday, March 13th through late last night) but that I would review the postings as soon as I returned, would take the appropriate steps, and would give her a prompt and thorough response.

Again, the same fundamental facts still apply:  I'm a reasonable guy, I have absolutely no intention of doing anything illegal here on Failing Enterprise (I'm advised regularly by my Internet and intellectual property attorneys), and Enterprise has had my contact information since the day the site went live.  We're not "hiding" from Enterprise, or trying to be "underground"; we're just trying to use open public discussion to encourage them to change their bad behavior.  If anyone feels we've violated their rights in any way, just contact us and we'll respond appropriately.

Regrettably, before I could even have a chance to review the postings in question, and while she knew I was out of town and less able to respond, she bullied ezBoard into taking down the entire Discussion Board, including all 7,000+ messages, 99% of which I believe she had no objection to.  The board went dark around Wednesday morning, March 16th.

At this point (Sunday morning), I'm still trying to get access to the Discussion Board so that I can take the appropriate steps.

I will still prepare a response to the Enterprise attorney, as I promised, and get it out within the next couple of days.

It appears that Enterprise once again had an opportunity to do the right thing, but has instead chosen to take a different path.  Like the incident recently with the Wikipedia page about Enterprise, they appear to be trying to go out on the Internet and retroactively remove unfavorable information posted by their customers.  They're acting like they've accidentally set their hair on fire and are now trying to put it out with a hammer.

In the meantime, it seems likely we will have to host our own discussion board in-house.  There are several benefits to this:  We'll be able to customize it better, add more useful features and benefits that our community members want, and can continue to scale the growth of our online community.  Before the Discussion Board went dark, we were getting 7,000 page views per day and the traffic just kept increasing.  By hosting our own board, we can scale up by a factor of 10 or 100.  It will also be faster and more responsive and I'll be better able to manage it while I travel.

I'll know more in hours or days.

Over the past few days, the number of fan mails and concerned messages has exceeded the total count ever received since the site first went live!  I can understand how you all are missing your daily fix of the Discussion Board at Failing Enterprise.  We'll get it back up this week, one way or another.  Our community needs us and we're going to deliver. Thanks for all your kind words.

Wednesday, March 2nd, 2005

Over the past two weeks, traffic has been growing at a tremendous rate.  The site now gets an average of 6,000 page views per day!  The number of posts on the discussion board is also up substantially.  The total increase for both metrics is over 50%!

I haven't heard of the site being linked to by any particularly popular site; it appears the growth is pure old-fashioned organic growth.  This is really starting to become something...

More on Enterprise car rental at the Failing Enterprise home page.