Updates 5/12/2011

The specific ones I want are gone though...
I still think a poll would be best.

:/
Sorry for being a bit upset that I lost some very important roleplays that were rather sentimental to me.

The fact is, those role-plays disappeared and nobody can tell us why. I'm really not game for the possibility of screwing with something else we don't understand the consequences of and possibly losing stuff that I worked hard on and have sentimental value to ME(no offense to anyone; it was an accident. But when you fall off your bike, you start wearing a helmet, ya dig?)

The fact remains that people are still posting and that's more that'll be undone by a rollback on top of the fact that there's no guarantee at all of getting those active posts back. As for the ideas themselves, while it's true that the IC is gone and I'm sorry that happened to anyone's work, a lot of you - especially you, Ana - made OOC threads preparing. So you still have the ideas, and from there you can even top what you wrote before by using whatever new writing skills you developed over time.

And if it's truly that sentimental, I know you won't be stopped in making it again. You never forget the RPs you truly love.

Let's take it down a notch here.

I am sure Fate is looking into the issue. Like she said, much of this is out of our control. Forumotion limits what can and cannot be done on its forums.

We don't want posts or role-plays to be deleted, but it happened.

If there was an easy way to fix this, it would have been done already.

I ask that we all just be patient for now.

I've been Googling stuff about this for the past few days just to satisfy my own curiosity, but I'm wondering: is there anyway to access the last back-up made on a different site? Even if it's just, say, admins?

Probably not, but I figured I'd ask.

Thanks, Hermes.

Axiom and I have been discussing this with each other over AIM and have been looking into it, as Hermes has said, trying to figure out a way to retrieve lost threads without having to delete everything following the day they were lost, including the members that have joined. It honestly is not possible. Either we lose all new members and all new posts from the past week, or we have to deal with having some RPs lost. Together, we came to the conclusion, as disappointed as I am, to not make things worse by erasing everything new now. It really bugs me that the pruning isn't set up correctly, and I honestly wish I never took the advice to try it out, but it's done. I apologize, and I hope we can just move forward and not have to worry about losing any more threads, since the pruning will not be something we will implement again.

Hmmm well I wasn't aware of this. Please SAVE your role-plays if they are sentimental to you. We can never fully trust the internet to save our stuff.

Axiom Awaits wrote:One-on-One, Casual and Caligo were all cut down to November of last year.

Edit: which was roughly 6 months ago and that's why I figured it was an error in setting up the auto-pruning. We never set it to delete anything and nothing was ever moved to the "basket" for pruning.

Sorry for coming off as bitchy...
I understand that we will never get those threads back and I'll accept it.
Oh well. *shrugs*

Lara wrote:I've been Googling stuff about this for the past few days just to satisfy my own curiosity, but I'm wondering: is there anyway to access the last back-up made on a different site? Even if it's just, say, admins?

Probably not, but I figured I'd ask.

Lara [and anyone else interested], to help clarify what you looked into: There is a page that can be accessed from the administration panel which has an option to restore the forum from backups. That would be wonderful, but unfortunately if I were to do that we would lose everything after the date I restore it to.

Info on backup and restore: http://help.forumotion.com/t9692-the-utilities-backup-and-restore

Forumotion admin reply: http://help.forumotion.com/t87145-how-do-i-retrieve-deleted-topics

Whoa, whoa, EVERYTHING past six months? 1 1/2 years of role-plays, gone??
Three sections is quite a bit more serious than one, I would say.

Anyone try the internet archive? http://www.archive.org/

Other than that, I think the only solution would be to roll back the forum to an earlier backup.

Yeah, I'm kind of in the roll-back camp, now, if the effect is this widespread. We should try to archive everything from the past week, and then do a roll-back, and somehow contact the new members. Or freeze most of the forums while we clean up this mess--something like that. :/

I believe Fate already decided against that, Kalon.

Plus, Fate is right. It is our responsibility to save any writing we have online. While it is absolutely terrible that we have lost so much because of a fluke in the system, we cannot force new members to re-register and newly active members to go and save all of their stuff because we didn't save ours. I'm very sad that our stuff is lost, but I am not going to argue that everyone else should do a bunch of work so that I can reminisce again. As a general rule, I try not to pitch arguments that involve a lot of work unless I'm the one doing the work.

That was before we found out it was three sections instead of one. I'm part of the staff, I would be among those doing the work, and I would consider it well worth the effort. If it's not possible then it's not possible, but if it's just a question of manpower then yes, I am absolutely willing to do it all myself if needed. If it's no longer an option, then moving on is all we can do, but I don't like the feeling that we're downplaying the loss for the sake of convenience. I'm not saying that's what we're doing; that's just how I feel. When you place two weeks of active history next to a year and a half of passive history, my paradigm starts to shift. That's all.

I don't want to cause drama and I don't want to rant. I've said my piece. If moving on is the only thing we can do, then that's what we'll do.

It is now out of the question entirely, as the backup only goes back 5 days. Once I found out that the role-plays were missing and then realized they went missing because of the pruning, and finally was trying to find a solution and before I realized the only solution was a trade-off -- reverting back to how things were exactly before the pruning happened but deleting everything after that point -- of course I was pretty upset. Axiom and I spent time trying to find other ways around that so that we could not only keep everything current, but also retrieve all the lost threads, and that all together took a lot of time, and now it is physically too late. We have seriously been discussing this a lot since it happened, online, on the phone, and in person, because this place is obviously important to us.

Like I stated, I really wish no one ever even told me about the pruning, as clearly it does not do as I thought it was intended to do, and then we would never be here, but now it is done and there isn't anything that can be done to fix it, and I truly, truly am very sorry about that. I really don't want to keep this open for discussion anymore. There is nothing left to be said on this, and I really just hope this helps underline the fact for everyone to please save anything that is important for you.

I, myself, have been saving all of my past role-plays that I've ever been involved in, even on different RPing forums. I've never had any issues with being deleted, but it simply was something that I felt was important to save, since I never feel truly comfortable relying on the internet to save my things. It's just common sense to save things to you that mean a lot, and I hate to say it like that, but in all honesty, if it means that much to you, then back it up. Maybe it's just from attending a technology-driven school and having that drilled into my head again and again by literally every teacher, because we had to have multiple flash drives and an external hard drive if we could afford it, plus of course saving things directly to your computer. But it is now embedded in me to save everything that really matters to me.

Please understand how genuinely sorry I am about this and also how hard it was for both Axiom and I to come to a decision whilst also devoting our free time to searching for any solutions. What's done is done, and all we can do now is move on.