April's fools: Temporary database corruption

[The_J]

Dear everyone,

Thunderfall earlier today got a message from our hosters. It seems they noticed some weird hiccups in the last days, which earlier today culminated in a hack of their systems. CFC was luckily not affected. In their security measures they have re-set all systems, and have rolled in database backups for all sites. Apparently this has worked sufficiently well, but it turns out we got some database corruption. Besides minor glitches, this mainly affects the post count. This database table could not be loaded, and the forum is slowly building up the display, which will, due to the corruption, display 0. This is an ongoing process, therefore this will show no post count for many members right now.
The hosts currently think though that this issue cannot be resolved, since it seems to affect all the backups.
The only backup, which is not affected, is the last one from the old vbulletin installation (October 2016).
So we need to make the decision if we will roll back only the post count to the status of 2016.
In the last few hours since this has happened we have also considered alternative options. The one with most support so far is to keep the post count at 0, but have each deleted post give a -1. In this way we hope to encourage more high quality posting.
Please let us know your opinions.

We are sorry, and we appreciate your understanding.

 

[Samson]

Just in case you have not noticed, the post counts still seem to be there in the members list.

 

[The_J]

Yes, these are stored separately, fpr performance reasons.
For everyone else below the top 30 the data seems to be lost :/.

 

[Samson]

keli has 523 messages, Grendeldef has 1,975, they are in the top 30?

 

[Birdjaguar]

wtf

 

[Valka D'Ur]

Yes, these are stored separately, fpr performance reasons.
For everyone else below the top 30 the data seems to be lost :/.

Who's in the top 30? The "Notable Members" only list the top 20.

The only backup, which is not affected, is the last one from the old vbulletin installation (October 2016).
So we need to make the decision if we will roll back only the post count to the status of 2016.
In the last few hours since this has happened we have also considered alternative options. The one with most support so far is to keep the post count at 0, but have each deleted post give a -1. In this way we hope to encourage more high quality posting.

Of all the things that could have been lost... if something had to be, why not those useless trophy points that nobody cares about? Post more than a month or two and everyone's got the same number anyway (it's a XenForo thing that can be customizable; I've got over 1500 at TrekBBS, but they give out trophy points for more things than CFC does, including post count high enough to earn admittance to each of the hidden Rank Lounges).

So let me get this straight: Does this mean that the problem will eventually be fixed or not? If we do nothing, we will forever have 0 post count? Looks that way, since nobody posting so far previously to the post I'm composing has gained anything. Is it that it's not counted at all, or just not displaying?

What do you mean by keeping it at 0 but having each deleted post give a -1? Say a dozen-post free-for-all happens, and everyone in it, including anyone who tries to post a "calm down" or happened to be answering or asking a question not involved in that argument, gets their post count knocked down so it visibly shows the members involved as having negative post count, even though not all of them may have made bad posts?

Please don't suggest these things don't happen, or at least similar, as I recall years ago during a contentious argument in Site Feedback during your previous time on staff; I was affected because you said that if you hadn't also deleted my post, the thread wouldn't have made sense because my post - which wasn't bad - would not have seemed relevant to anything in the surrounding conversation (and please don't get after me for PDMA; I'm just providing context for my opinion, which was asked for). This essentially meant I lost post count through no fault of my own. If we'd been having the current problem back then, I'd have had a negative count because of something that wasn't my fault.

As for "encouraging more high-quality posting"... Are we seriously still using that phrase? The only time it makes sense is when making a thread Red Diamond or leaving it as a regular thread with less stringent moderation and wanting more on-topic posts with as little drift as possible.

You can get free-for-alls in Red Diamond threads as easily as in regular threads, and thus mass deletions, sometimes catching other people in the cross-fire as I've mentioned above.

There are many high quality posts in the serial threads, for instance, though I know there are some people on staff (or among some retired staff) who don't think this is true.

So no, I am not in favor of anyone being forced to display a post count in negative numbers, especially if the problem is so bad that they will never be able to make that up to at least get back to 0, never mind in the positives. I've experienced looking at negative numbers in post count, reputation, etc. (not that reputation is an issue here, thank goodness), and it honestly feels like a kick in the teeth.


Seriously, the last post count backup was OVER FIVE YEARS AGO, when we were using a different type of forum software? Or were there more recent ones, but they have other problems that make them unusable? Do I understand this correctly?


Here's a question: Can we still link to specific posts? Can we still search our individual posts in specific threads, and in that way, know how many posts we've made in each thread? It would be painstaking work, but if we can do that, those of us who care can at least figure out some guesstimate of our current/recent post count, as in X number of posts in such-and-such a thread, going back how many days/weeks/months we want to.

This is really annoying, since I had over 26,000 - coming up close to 27,000 (would have made that easily this year). Yes, one of my goals was to eventually make the "Notable Members" list - considering the number of people on that list who have been inactive for years, I actually had a realistic shot at getting there. (Yes, I'm aware that it doesn't come with a prize or privilege or anything other than my own personal satisfaction that I was here and had things to say.)

I will say this: Thank goodness we don't have any subforums that depend on post count to access. Are there any post count rules governing new accounts - like so many needed to be able to use the PM system, use a custom avatar, etc.? I seem to recall some talk about that as some of us were receiving adspam and weird "likes" from new accounts that were determined to be made by 0-post count bots.


What are the other options discussed that you haven't mentioned?

Right now, since I don't like seeing 0 in place of the real number, I would prefer the 2016 post count that indicates that at least I've done something here, instead of twiddling my thumbs while lurking.


Sorry for the angry tone. I know this is something that happened, not something that was done on purpose. Have any other forums mentioned this and possible solutions at the XenForo support forum?

 

[thetrooper]

Interesting

 

[Catharsis]

The obvious solution is to put our post counts in our signatures and manually increment them every time we post. I updated mine before I posted this so I'm ahead of the game! Keep up, suckers!

 

[Valka D'Ur]

The obvious solution is to put our post counts in our signatures and manually increment them every time we post. I updated mine before I posted this so I'm ahead of the game! Keep up, suckers!

Did you remember what it was yesterday, before this happened?

 

[Catharsis]

Did you remember what it was yesterday, before this happened?

Yeah I just looked at my tattoo. Ah dammit now I have to get that changed, too.

 

[Takhisis]

My postcount! Of 54,027 as of this post!


MY POSTCOUNT!

 

[Valka D'Ur]

I guess there's no hope that this is an April Fool's joke? I just noticed the date...

 

[thetrooper]

Interesting

I guess there's no hope that this is an April Fool's joke? I just noticed the date...

 

[Hygro]

It's cool you guys just migrate a new post count table with manual entries.

I had the most posts at 142,069

 

[Valka D'Ur]

It's cool you guys just migrate a new post count table with manual entries.

I had the most posts at 142,069

There's a guy at TrekBBS with a post count of 262,457 (he's probably added another half-dozen in the time it's taken me to type this). The next person down has a mere 105,140.

The lowest person on that forum's Notable Members list has a post count somewhere around the highest person on CFC. I know where a lot of the highest-ranking guy's posts come from - there are a couple of threads in an opt-in forum there that are basically gossip threads with really meandering conversations, and then there are the 3/5/7-word story threads, plus many years ago we had the "Shouting Spock" thread where you could post anything you wanted, as long as you posted in all-caps. That one was rather cathartic, as shouting was compulsory.

High-quality posting it was not. But it was fun.

 

[Fippy]

Oh no what will i do without my post number, tried so hard by spam-suggesting every bad horror movie i found in the last 5 years.

 

[leif erikson]

Good News!! We have found and restored Message Count. Thank you for your patience.

Hope everyone had a great April Fool's Day!

 

[Valka D'Ur]

My question remains: Someone said there are 30 people on the Notable Members list. I can only see 20.

So what happened to the other 10, and who are they?

 

[Catharsis]

Good News!! We have found and restored Message Count. Thank you for your patience.

Hope everyone had a great April Fool's Day!

I admit that I was initially fooled by this! At the time I originally posted I was absolutely willing to believe this (to be fair the first post was sprinkled with believeable little details like 'CFC hasn't been backed up in six years' ). It was only about five seconds after I clicked 'Post Reply' that I realised what was actually happening.

@thetrooper seemed to have got it immediately so I frantically liked his post to make it look like I'd been in on it the whole time as well.

 

[The_J]

My question remains: Someone said there are 30 people on the Notable Members list. I can only see 20.

So what happened to the other 10, and who are they?

I just remembered the number wrong .

Thanks to
@leif erikson
@Birdjaguar
@lymond
@Arakhor
@Laurana Kanan
@Browd
For helping with the April's fools .