If it was possible to click a button and instantly upgrade everything without any issues, we'd do it. Perhaps some of you have the idea that upgrading the software this forum is using is analogous to, say, upgrading your operating system on your computer. It is not. This site is a production system with hundreds of thousands of users.
The risk of data loss is only one problem.
Among other things, vB3 styles don't work on vB4 (this is well known and can be confirmed by a simple Google search) so our styles would need to be remade (all of them, including Mobile and NextGen/Lite); there are many plugins, scripts, and code fixes written by Sythe, Matthew and myself which probably won't carry over too well; there are third-party products installed which are meant only for this version of vBulletin, and definitely cannot be carried over...
If you think Sythe.org is the only forum stuck using a dated version of vBulletin, these are the top vBulletin sites according to Big-Boards rankings:
http://web.archive.org/web/20110707233428/http://rankings.big-boards.com/?filter=vBulletin,all
I had to use an archive link from a few months ago because the site is currently down... regardless, try visiting the top sites listed here - NONE of them are on vB4. Hell, SomethingAwful, one of the largest and best-known sites on the Internet, still uses
vBulletin 2.2.9!
Of course vBulletin.com will always upgrade to the latest version of their own software, because doing anything else would look bad for business. Aside from them, can you name any sites
anywhere near (or larger than) the size of Sythe.org that have upgraded
from vB3 to vB4?
If you don't want your email to be harvested against your will, then do not post it publicly here or anywhere. Simple as that.