UKDNF post mortem

[dn]

Everyone was wondering why UKDNF went offline for so long..

I have sent Aaron an email asking if all is ok and whether he needs any help in bringing the site back up. When I heard he is spending time with his daughter and is going to make an announcement in the evening, it was immediately clear that the forum is not coming back..

But the circumstances were mystifying..

Aaron has denied any third party influences and stated that it was his own decision to kill UKDNF, but obviously everything didn't add up, especially as he refused to pass the administration (or at least to provide back the contents) to someone more capable.

It was only until later in the day that I learned from GreyWing's blog what has actually happened.

(be sure to read another post about Ryan Ewan involvement)

Ryan's Brandable, after 4000000000 hours in the works, had such a botched launch that every "for sale" page was leaking private seller's data, including emails, phone numbers and bank account(!) numbers.

Instead of taking this matter as a grown-up (notifying ICO, etc), Ryan decided to fight with the messenger with his full hands and censor any mention of the leak discussion.

I couldn't believe Aaron could bow to such unwarranted claims and first remove post from the original poster, then going down even further and kill the whole forum.

Brandable should only be grateful that their leak became known so soon, instead of running their amateur platform with their typically inherent hype and seed Google cache with pages containing private data for so much longer.

 

[wonder_lander]

If Aaron is reading this, I just want to say take care of yourself, and thanks for everything.

 

[diablo]

If Aaron is reading this, I just want to say take care of yourself, and thanks for everything.

Hope Aaron will join this forum. What he achieved in such a short period was quite an accomplishment.

 

[Lee]

If Aaron is reading this, I just want to say take care of yourself, and thanks for everything.

Just want to echo this comment.

It was thanks to Aaron that I got back into joining in on a forum posting about domains since I exited the nut house forum.

 

[dn]

If Aaron is reading this, I just want to say take care of yourself, and thanks for everything.

Agree, everyone is grateful to Aaron for re-uniting all under a new roof and I *can* understand why he decided not to pick a fight.

What I *can not* understand, is his decision to kill it all completely, instead of transferring the ownership to someone willing to take a stand (and I betcha there would be many willing) or at least allow members to export their data. That felt like a stab in the back and for me it's hard to fathom why.

 

[rb5]

Agree, everyone is grateful to Aaron for re-uniting all under a new roof and I *can* understand why he decided not to pick a fight.

What I *can not* understand, is his decision to kill it all completely, instead of transferring the ownership to someone willing to take a stand (and I betcha there would be many willing) or at least allow members to export their data. That felt like a stab in the back and for me it's hard to fathom why.

May just be that clear-cut break, if legal threats were involved passing these over doesn't stop anything that would've happened under ownership, whereas closing may be sufficient enough for the other party to not take further action.

 

[wonder_lander]

I really hope that 4m doesn't become "....a swamp of trash, racism, and a platform for bashing other businesses and people."

 

[cm]

I really hope that 4m doesn't become "....a swamp of trash, racism, and a platform for bashing other businesses and people."

That comment was wild. Up to this point I'd been seeing Helmuts as a sort of 'useful idiot' just bumbling along. But after that remark, maybe not all is as it seems.

 

[seemly]

at least allow members to export their data.

Yeah. I was gutted about this bit.

More than 3,000 posts, and there was some fantastic good will, and useful nuggets of information now (potentially) lost forever.

 

[dn]

I really hope that 4m doesn't become "....a swamp of trash, racism, and a platform for bashing other businesses and people."

yes, but it shouldn't be a neutered community either.

anger is a natural human feeling and for someone needing to express it verbally, it should be allowed to be expressed. Otherwise these unvented emotions might add-up and prompt people to do much worse things, offline too.

 

[rob]

Without Aaron 4M would not likely exist, so big credit to his contribution and legacy on that!

Looking forward, in terms of forum structures, could a co-op style model work? That could be the beginnings of a UK trade org that could then do formal consultation feedbacks / rep etc where relevant.

 

[dn]

Without Aaron 4M would not likely exist, so big credit to his contribution and legacy on that!

absolutely, this is an attempt to continue UKDNF the way it was taking off - re-iterating and improving.

Looking forward, in terms of forum structures, could a co-op style model work? That could be the beginnings of a UK trade org that could then do formal consultation feedbacks / rep etc where relevant.

I do hope that co-op can work in this case. Let's start a new thread to discuss this.

 

[Muller2]

Tbh I was surprised at what I read.

Tbh I just hope Aaron joins here and we can carry on as we left off.

 

[Jack Bean]

Aaron,

You did a great job my friend. Your project was executed with perfect precision and you gave a lot of folk with pent-up emotions the opportunity to get them out of their system. You appeared to be a very professional character who wanted everyone to get on and be friends. Unfortunately, the world is full of deceptive self-serving little arseholes who love to take advantage of those who may be not as clued as some of us. I do not like deception and I hate bullies even more. Although some of us may have been a teensy weensy disappointed we couldn't stick the boot in on ukdnf's behalf I think it would be uplifting to everyone to have you here. I bet you didn't expect that from me ;) If we don't see you then best of Britsh old boy and very best wishes for the future.

 

[dn]

I really hope that 4m doesn't become "....a swamp of trash, racism, and a platform for bashing other businesses and people."

I now realize this is a quote from Acorn's Helmuts.

UKDNF was a great up and coming resource, and Helmuts, I am more than certain you can appreciate that in this industry, like any other, competition is good and healthy.

Helmuts said:
Yes, the beginning of that little thing was brilliant! I admired how it started and loved seeing how active it was + it brough up a great competitive spirit and all industry gained (Live Feeds are one of them).

"little thing"? I am sure he couldn't wipe the sweat fast enough =)

However, it soon turned into a swamp of trash, racism, and a platform for bashing other businesses and people.

Oh, right - that's the quote.

Who killed it?

I dunno - whoever threatened Aaron with legal stuff? There is only one culprit I can think of, with Brandable launch fiasco.

The users who couldn't stay professional spreading content like that.

+ with Nominets logos attached to many of these posts.

Nominet logo is still attached to "Brandable" pages.
Should Nominet be held responsible for it's members details being leaked on the site "supported" by Nominet?

We can thank them for that.

In the end, Acorn was the only one who gained.

About Aaron - I have only the best wishes to him. He had something amazing! .. sadly, it went sideways.

hypocrisy, hypocrisy ... oh, well.

 

[Jack Bean]

Just a quick follow-up post before WW3 kicks off.

The thing that angers me more than anything posted is the fact Aaron received a threat that has made him suffer in various ways. The general consensus is that Ryan sent it thus becoming the target of retaliation. Aaron has refused to give details and publicly stated in his final UKDNF message that there will be no further public comment on the matter. Thinking logically and without any emotion, How do we know Ryan was behind it? There are others connected with the brandable launch that I feel would be more inclined to use such a tactic to take down anything that could damage the 'dot UK group image. I feel there is a possibility that Ryan could be the fall guy/proxy in this case. Was the legal threat correspondence signed 'Ryan' or 'Dot UK Group'? I would love to examine the threat correspondence along with my legal adviser. The threat could be a prelude to harassment if baseless giving Aaron a legal claim against the arsehole that sent it if they did in fact continue with the bollocks. As GreyWing implies in his blog, You will feel great if you kick a bully in the bollocks (Words to that effect anyway).

 

[ben]

Yeah. I was gutted about this bit.

More than 3,000 posts, and there was some fantastic good will, and useful nuggets of information now (potentially) lost forever.

This is the inherent problem with 3rd party controlled platforms. Perhaps with this forum, we should all come together to formulate a sort of "constitution" type of thing, whereby there are regulations the platform agrees to follow. Not rules, as such, but golden laws. ie. allowing members certain rights before they are banned, or whatever. Because essentially, all forums rely on UGC and that content is not owned by the forum. When you bring things like GDPR into it, Acorn might actually being breaking laws by not allowing access to users data. This forum doesn't want to follow suit.

 

[GreyWing]

How do we know Ryan was behind it?

I've seen things that make me positive what I said in that blog post is the truth. I won't go into what I have seen or where it came from, but my blood was boiling as I read it, so much so I had to ask not to be sent anymore and I didn't even finish reading what I was sent. There has been other bits since that leave me in no doubt.

None of it has come from the previous owner, I've only just emailed him about 30 minutes ago, that's the first I have reached out to him since the forum closed in the last week.

I reached out to apologise

Apology to The Old Owner Of UKDNF

I could probably just edit one of my previous posts, hide it away, and keep my head down - but that wouldn’t be right. This needs a blog post of its own.

www.greywing.uk

 

[Jack Bean]

I've seen things that make me positive what I said in that blog post is the truth. I won't go into what I have seen or where it came from, but my blood was boiling as I read it, so much so I had to ask not to be sent anymore and I didn't even finish reading what I was sent. There has been other bits since that leave me in no doubt.

None of it has come from the previous owner, I've only just emailed him about 30 minutes ago, that's the first I have reached out to him since the forum closed in the last week.

I reached out to apologise

Apology to The Old Owner Of UKDNF

I could probably just edit one of my previous posts, hide it away, and keep my head down - but that wouldn’t be right. This needs a blog post of its own.

www.greywing.uk

Thank you for the clarification. Now I know my direction.

I do think as much of the offending post should be restored here highlighting the data breach in full and let them bring it on if they want to try their luck.

I haven't seen anything and I'm very peeved, to put it mildly.

Jack.

 

[GreyWing]

No worries mate, I totally get that people want to be sure as possible before posting, we should all try to do that. I wish I could show what I'd seen here, but the sources would become apparent and they don't want to get involved.

I do think as much of the offending post should be restored here highlighting the data breach in full and let them bring it on if they want to try their luck.

Looking back, I'm not sure this thread was the key motivation behind the take down. The more I look at it, the more I think it was the other thread where people were doing a deep dive into the individual's background, the pictures of the fake London Office etc. I think these contributors hit a nerve.

I would have posted it on my blog, but sadly Google only had the third page cached, the first two were missing. I didn't think it was right to just post the third page, so I didn't.

But if you ask me, that thread was the real target, the brandable stuff was the excuse used but probably irrelevant.