RockyMountainPirate's posts wiped out
I'll try and make this as clear and concise as possible...
THE SHORT VERSION
This morning, RockyMountainPirate, one of our most revered and active Gulch Producers, had her account and all of her posts deleted. The error was mine alone. There is nothing wrong with the system. We were not hacked. I deleted all of the posts accidentally.
THE LONG VERSION
I went to LA this Wednesday to watch the Director's cut of the film. After watching the film, I was in meetings the rest of Wednesday and Thursday until I went to the airport to catch a late flight back to Texas. I was effectively out of pocket for two days - no time to check emails, etc.
Waking up Friday morning I had a TON of stuff to catch up on; made my coffee, went to work; checked my email and the first thing I saw, still with one eye open, was a flagged comment. I went to check out the comment and sure enough, it was a spammer.
Here's where it gets interesting...
First, you need to know that admins of GGO have special links attached to each comment that no one else has - "Hide", "Edit", "Delete", and the new "Expunge." Expunge is a quick way to wipe out an account and all of its related posts. This is what we use for spammers.
Back to the story... right underneath the spammer's comment, was a comment from our beloved RockyMountainPirate. Both comments of course carried an "Expunge" link. Guess which one I clicked on. Right. Pirate's. The system actually asked "Do you really want to expunge RockyMountainPirate." With one eye open, I clicked "yes"... and immediately proceeded to call Jay.
Me: Jay, I just expunged RockyMountainPirate.
Jay: Oh boy.
Me: Long story. Please tell me we can get everything back.
Jay: Give me a minute.
Jay took a minute and unfortunately, there was no way to recover the account from expungement. All of Rocky's posts were lost for good.
I immediately called and emailed Pirate to tell her the news, give her free lifetime membership to the Gulch and invite her to the Atlas Shrugged 3 World Premiere in Vegas (it doesn't make up for the mistake, but hopefully it takes the edge off of the sting a bit).
So, to be clear, we were not hacked. The mistake was mine. The system worked as designed. We will be adding some further safeguards to ensure nothing like this happens in the future.
My apologies to everyone, ESPECIALLY PIRATE, for the negligence and the resulting loss of great content.
THE SHORT VERSION
This morning, RockyMountainPirate, one of our most revered and active Gulch Producers, had her account and all of her posts deleted. The error was mine alone. There is nothing wrong with the system. We were not hacked. I deleted all of the posts accidentally.
THE LONG VERSION
I went to LA this Wednesday to watch the Director's cut of the film. After watching the film, I was in meetings the rest of Wednesday and Thursday until I went to the airport to catch a late flight back to Texas. I was effectively out of pocket for two days - no time to check emails, etc.
Waking up Friday morning I had a TON of stuff to catch up on; made my coffee, went to work; checked my email and the first thing I saw, still with one eye open, was a flagged comment. I went to check out the comment and sure enough, it was a spammer.
Here's where it gets interesting...
First, you need to know that admins of GGO have special links attached to each comment that no one else has - "Hide", "Edit", "Delete", and the new "Expunge." Expunge is a quick way to wipe out an account and all of its related posts. This is what we use for spammers.
Back to the story... right underneath the spammer's comment, was a comment from our beloved RockyMountainPirate. Both comments of course carried an "Expunge" link. Guess which one I clicked on. Right. Pirate's. The system actually asked "Do you really want to expunge RockyMountainPirate." With one eye open, I clicked "yes"... and immediately proceeded to call Jay.
Me: Jay, I just expunged RockyMountainPirate.
Jay: Oh boy.
Me: Long story. Please tell me we can get everything back.
Jay: Give me a minute.
Jay took a minute and unfortunately, there was no way to recover the account from expungement. All of Rocky's posts were lost for good.
I immediately called and emailed Pirate to tell her the news, give her free lifetime membership to the Gulch and invite her to the Atlas Shrugged 3 World Premiere in Vegas (it doesn't make up for the mistake, but hopefully it takes the edge off of the sting a bit).
So, to be clear, we were not hacked. The mistake was mine. The system worked as designed. We will be adding some further safeguards to ensure nothing like this happens in the future.
My apologies to everyone, ESPECIALLY PIRATE, for the negligence and the resulting loss of great content.
I'd expect no less from an Obj, but in this day and age it's downright refreshing.
RMP - sorry for your (our) loss. It was good stuff. More to come, I'm sure.
As a fail safe however, we are looking into implementing an interval based historical backup.
On a serious note, it's nice to be onboard with first rate folks like these here. Accidents happen and not trying to speak for Pirate, but knowing that the fist move you made after discovering your error was fessing up to the mistake and moving to makeup for the error. Very well done.
Stuff happens and I thank you for quickly contacting me and letting me know. I'll get busy finding more things to stimulate discussions.