Giant glitches and moving forward (7/24)

Jumbled Thoughts · Post by **MarioKnight** » Mon Jul 24, 2006 12:15 am

Last night, some glitches were found in the forums. Users noticed a few threads that suffered the same glitch the PGSM thread has had for some time. Upon further evaluation by the staff online at the time, we had determined the symptoms of a glitch in the matrix or something. The cause is still unknown, but the following has been affected:

1) Forum user Panda has been completely wiped off the database. When I say completely, I mean COMPLETELY. Her userdata, posts, everything. It appears that she is the only user to disappear, which in the grand scheme of things isn't that bad. However, she did have a number of posts in the past few months, which will make recent threads quite confusing. Especially when her posts are quoted or there's direct discussion between anyone and her. This somewhat leads to....

2) .... more threads with the non-existant page thingy. I'm guessing because of the now missing posts from reason #1. In any case, when a thread with this glitch is noticed, that thread will be locked and restarted anew.

3) A few threads have been noticed to be missing. So all that can really be done is to restart those thrads if one is noticed missing.

Though we were able to figure out what happened, we have no idea what caused all that to happen. Too big to be a glitch, too small to be a hack job (imo). Really, I have no idea what caused all of this to happen. Since I don't know the cause, I don't know how I can preent it from happening again. Save writing code and scripts to make constant backups, which can be space and bandwitdh consuming, yet there's no gurantee even if I were to cook something up. All we can do from this point is move forward and accept the losses. I'm, just as unhappy about this as anyone else. I would say moreso, and will just direct anyone to the thread about "n/a" posts to just get a glimpse of how I feel about this situation.

So that's the state we're in. I hate it, but I hate keeping these forums down too and there's no point in having them turned off when we've come up with nothing to fix these problems. All we have are these suggestions to go on and not have much affected. I'm sorry for what happened, especially to Panda since she lost the most in this whole ordeal and essentially has to start everything over here. This is a big pain I know, hopefully we can all move on from this as we have from other issues in the past.

Jumbled Thoughts · Post by **MarioKnight** » Mon Jul 24, 2006 1:28 am

I have made a big breakthrough. Panda's posts still exist, so I am in the process of fixing them as well as her account. If you see her posts pop up that is good. Her profile and account will be a little work, should be up fairly soon though.

I am so relieved right now.

Maybe I can figure out excatly what happened with PGSM with this stragety I just used. o.o;

Jumbled Thoughts · Post by **MarioKnight** » Mon Jul 24, 2006 1:45 am

Panda's account has appeared to be restored, at least on my end. ^_^ Panda, if you are reading this and things aren't working for you, please let me know so we can work on fixing it, but it looks like it should be ok.

I'm going to see what I can find for the other problems, but at least I got the really big part of this clusterfuck fixed up. ^_^

Edit 5 minutes later: It appears that the missing threads are no longer missing. At least the ones we noticed last night. Yay. ^_^ Guess that leaves the stupid glitch that PGSM has had and others have taken as well. *sigh*

Alexclow345 · Post by **Alexclow345** » Mon Jul 24, 2006 7:16 am

Horray!!!

OT: Did you add the PGSM titles to the Sailor Moon History section and the whole PGSM part? I've never seen those there before.

Neon Heart · Post by **Neon Heart** » Mon Jul 24, 2006 8:03 am

Sweet job fixing things up, Dan-san!

Post by **Tiff** » Mon Jul 24, 2006 10:00 am

YAAAAAAAY, DAN!

Jumbled Thoughts · Post by **MarioKnight** » Mon Jul 24, 2006 10:19 am

Thanx everyone. ^_^

Alexclow345 wrote:OT: Did you add the PGSM titles to the Sailor Moon History section and the whole PGSM part? I've never seen those there before.

Awesome, I didn't expect anyone to notice until at least noon. XD 10 points for you. And yes, those were all added recentally. I put them all in real late last Sunday night, and then I figured out that they wouldn't appear until every Sunday, meaning that it would be a week before anyone actually saw anything. -_-;

Alexclow345 · Post by **Alexclow345** » Mon Jul 24, 2006 10:53 am

MarioKnight wrote:Thanx everyone. ^_^

Alexclow345 wrote:OT: Did you add the PGSM titles to the Sailor Moon History section and the whole PGSM part? I've never seen those there before.
Awesome, I didn't expect anyone to notice until at least noon. XD 10 points for you. And yes, those were all added recentally. I put them all in real late last Sunday night, and then I figured out that they wouldn't appear until every Sunday, meaning that it would be a week before anyone actually saw anything. -_-;

10 points! WEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!!!!!!!!!!

Also, Today is monday. You said PGSM aired on Sunday. Those PGSM things are up today. I'm confused.

Panda · Post by **Panda** » Mon Jul 24, 2006 10:56 am

OMG I borke the forum...!?!

I'm terribly sorry. I didn't even realize what was happeneing until right now.

But yah, I can't help but feel I did something to cause this so I sincerally apologize on behalf of my fucking up the forums.

(I've been having problems with my internet connection as of late so I'm thinking it may have had something to do with me unplugging and re-setting everything? I don't know... just looking for clues)

Jumbled Thoughts · Post by **MarioKnight** » Mon Jul 24, 2006 11:14 am

Panda wrote:OMG I borke the forum...!?!

I'm terribly sorry. I didn't even realize what was happeneing until right now.

But yah, I can't help but feel I did something to cause this so I sincerally apologize on behalf of my fucking up the forums.

(I've been having problems with my internet connection as of late so I'm thinking it may have had something to do with me unplugging and re-setting everything? I don't know... just looking for clues)

Unless you knowledgingly somehow accessed the database and removed various parts yourself, you have nothing to worry about. That can't be done via the forums themselves, so if you've only been using them on the site, then I don't blame you at all since what happened can't possibly be done with the forum software. I still don't know how it happened, but I do know this software in and out and I do know it wasn't the work of the software at all. So there's no need for you to apologize.

Alexclow345 wrote:Also, Today is monday. You said PGSM aired on Sunday. Those PGSM things are up today. I'm confused.

^^;;;; I haven't been able to tell what day of the week it is without aid for a couple of months now. ^^;;; They were added in real lat MONDAY night, not Sunday, since I remember when I added them that it would be a week before anyone actually saw them.

Jumbled Thoughts · Post by **MarioKnight** » Wed Aug 02, 2006 6:14 pm

What most likely helped break things

That blog entry was linked in the monthly newsletter of our host that was sent out yesterday. So I think it's safe to say it was all the craziness that went on in CA last weekend, and it's good to see an explination and steps being taken to keep them from happening again.