Mark, you replied to my comments twice, are you ok?

Yes, I split the quote into what was intended to be two posts, I forgot about the annoying post merging on here.

I said that if this site becomes nothing more than a host for people to solicit paid work for versions which are no longer officially supported there is no reason for it to be kept open.

It doesn't take a rocket scientist to see that the site is doing nothing constructive for the promotion of vB5. Why would IB keep open a site that serves no purpose to the only software version they are currently selling and officially supporting? That was the question I asked, to which I received no answer, valid or otherwise.

The end isn't here. IB and KKR, more specifically, have far more than enough capital to see vB5 through to fruition. That doesn't mean this site continues to serve what IB considers a useful purpose. What would be lost in their eyes if they simply moved everything related to the vB5 product over to vbulletin.com? It's not as though there is so much traffic the server couldn't handle the additional load.

Closing this site just isn't on the agenda, indeed it's part of the support process to refer customisation queries here. vB3 and vB4 are still supported by the support team, it's only ongoing development that has stopped, and in fact that had already been the case for years, Paul was only doing php compatibility changes and some minor bugfixes. There has been no 'active' development (new features, improvements etc) of vB3 and vB4 for several years now, I think 2012/2013 in fact when 4.2.0 and 4.2.1 came out. vB3 it's actually back to 2009.

In terms of support: Support tickets and forum queries are all still given equal priority regardless of version.

Nobody can say what may happen in the future obviously.

That seems like a valid reason to keep it open, since its part of the service it provides.
Also, why do you keep stating vB5 is the only officially supported version ? :erm: Thats just wrong.

This site has never existed to promote any version of vbulletin, somrthing the "rocket scientist" would already know.
The scientist would also know that vB3 & vB4 are still officially supported. :cool:

It's simple, forums in general are dead.

They didn't see that coming (or they decided not to do anything), they were slow, but they still had to create a new product. But I doubt they were given enough fund to develop a good one. And finally there's vb5, a half-@ss forum with some social network features, bad design and full of bugs (at the early state, I don't know its current situation now).

Bull. The current vBulletin 5 sales page lists "Extensive 3rd Party Developer Community" under Support.

https://www.vbulletin.com/en/features/

The vBulletin 4 sales page listed the third party developer community under support.

Congratulations, you just figured out this site hosts 3rd party tools.

Now perhaps you would like to explain how that means the site (which still runs vb3 btw) is "promoting" any version.

In fact, whch version is it "promoting" exactly ?

The page specifically lists vBulletin 5 and ONLY vBulletin 5. Naming "extensive third party developer community" of any version other than vBulletin 5 as a feature of vBulletin 5 on a page which only names vBulletin 5 as the product for sale is a complete non sequitur. I think you're looking for an argument from ignorance and you'll not get one from me.

I think you completely avoided answering the question, with mumbo jumbo.