Investigating a problem, help appreciated

[Iversen]

I am not surprised of the lapse of 5 pages, since I have seen exactly the same thing with my own log - but I have one way of testing disappearences, namely the spreadsheet list I keep over the images I have used on each page in that thread. I checked the recent pages one by one, but cursorily, and saw that the page loss diminished gradually back to 2018, so I assumed that it was a certain type of posts that had disappeared, and I assumed that it was partially deleted posts (where I still could see the post, but with a marking - and only when logged in). It could however also be messages from some of the missing IDs - and that would be hard to test. Because I have used images in almost all my own messages in that thread I could just check ALL images for maybe a year back against my list, and if random posts have went pouff then I should be able to see exactly which ones. I'll try find time to do that one of the coming days.

I have been away for most of this week, but before that I have discussed another possibility with emk, namely to check the oldest extant backup against the current member list and find the lost IDs. It is possible that only the items in the member list have somehow been deleted, and then their posts then could in principle still exist as forlorn orphans - but I wouldn't bet on it. I worked with some similar problems in my old job, but I retired 9 years ago and my database manipulating skills now are beyond rusty. However the two relevant backups won't disappear (I hope!) so such an operation doesn't have to be done today or tomorrow.

[Poemen]

Not sure if this is the place to post it, but my account seems to have been deleted too - it was previously 'Beli Tsar'; I tried emailing some time back but didn't get through.

If there's any chance of restoring it, that would be great!

[Poemen]

Not sure if this is the place to post it, but my account seems to have been deleted too - it was previously 'Beli Tsar'; I tried emailing some time back but didn't get through.

If there's any chance of restoring it, that would be great!

Bump?

Totally understand if this isn't feasible or if it's something that will have to wait, but it would be good to know whether I should just press ahead with this account or wait for the restoration of the old one.

[Iversen]

Press ahead. If we somehow find a way to restore your old account, you can make a cross reference from one to the other - but in this moment there is no garantee that you get the old account back in a functional shape with all its data.

[Le Baron]

It seems the script for cleaning up dormant accounts was too vigorous and must have also caught up accounts which don't post regularly. Those who post frequently seem to be all unaffected.

[Poemen]

Press ahead. If we somehow find a way to restore your old account, you can make a cross reference from one to the other - but in this moment there is no garantee that you get the old account back in a functional shape with all its data.

Thank you. Will do.

[Poemen]

It seems the script for cleaning up dormant accounts was too vigorous and must have also caught up accounts which don't post regularly. Those who post frequently seem to be all unaffected.

I wonder if it would be valuable to include post likes in the criteria in future? I haven't posted much in the last year (I've been ill) but have occasionally added a like or two. I was pretty regular before that and had hundreds of posts.

Totally appreciate these things happen and not meaning to complain, genuinely just wondering if there's a way to reduce the disruption that this necessary house-cleaning causes in future!

[Carl_in_Vermont]

I wonder if it would be valuable to include post likes in the criteria in future? I haven't posted much in the last year (I've been ill) but have occasionally added a like or two. I was pretty regular before that and had hundreds of posts.

I'd go a step beyond this suggestion and ask that posts not be deleted, just because users are inactive (or even passed away). I find this forum useful for the quality of the posts, and currently inactive users have written useful posts!

My original account (username Carl) is gone, and apparently all my posts. I'm so sorry to see that--I put a lot of work into documenting some things in some posts, and I've used the posts to share how to do things with language partners. I sometimes made posts with technical information that I didn't keep on my own machine, I think.

My log just has replies from users: viewtopic.php?f=15&t=16220&p=241145&hilit=Carl#p241145

Thanks to emk for posting this thread--I finally figured out why I couldn't log on, and created this new account. (I never saw a reply to my contact form to the moderators some weeks ago.)

But this sounds like an older problem affecting only a subset of users, which means any restoration would need to use the May backup, and would need to be a manual copying of lots of low level data between two different databases.

Probably recovering raw post text through May for specific accounts is less work.

Well, I don't know how much work it's looking like for you, emk, but if it's not too much trouble to restore the posts from the Carl account, I'd sure appreciate it.

Silver lining: Since there's no record of me registering for the 2024/2025 Super Challenge, I don't need to go onto the thread to explain why I dropped out. (I found I was uninterested in keeping detailed enough logs of my listening/watching/reading to keep tabs on my progress.)