Where did I go?

[LE752]

I just came back to the forums and the post I started and got up to 5 pages (and which I posted to this morning) is gone! My account also appeared to be gone as well. I re-registered under the same name and here I am. Did I do something wrong?

[jo]

Do you have the thread number in your browser history?

This one is t=6217 for example.

[jo]

There were 57 pages in the memberlist yesterday.

Today there are only 53: http://www.hhplace.org/hhboard/memberlist.php

Several weeks worth of new members (mostly spammers) have been deleted, and probably a few real members too by the look of things.

That is very careless, as it is obvious which were the spammers: zero posts, and spam in the URL behind the "www" button.

Here is the gap in the list (look at the join dates): http://www.hhplace.org/hhboard/memberlist.php?mode=joined&order=ASC&start=2600

Looks like the member ID numbers have been redone too, as there are no gaps in the numbers...

[LE752]

Unfortunately, no, I found out about my boyfriend's heel wearing by viewing his history...I'm more careful; mine is set to not save anything.

[LE752]

I signed up in February I think, and I'm gone. Weird. There were a lot of useful suggestions in that thread. I wonder if someone else has it in their history.

[jo]

If you know the title or thread number it can be found in Google and maybe the information copied back to a new thread...

Is this it? http://www.hhplace.org/hhboard/viewtopic.php?t=5928

If so, then all of your posts are gone.

Looks like your membership was deleted when someone deleted the hundreds of spammers... and all your posts went too.

This isn't the first time that has happened here.....

[jo]

Look at the first post in this thread: http://www.hhplace.org/hhboard/viewtopic.php?t=6097

It is obvious that the thread starter there has been deleted too, as the first visible post is a reply to a post that is obviously missing, and the user name mentioned is nowhere to be found in the current memberlist.

Hopefully, whoever has been editing things has been moving the stuff into a hidden forum from where it can be restored, and not just permanently deleting stuff without checking it or taking a backup copy first....

[jo]

This is all I could find out there:

http://www.google.com/search?q=cache:Xa1pzzPFYbcJ:www.hhplace.org

Your original USER NUMBER was 2716 for your original login:

http://www.hhplace.org/hhboard/profile.php?mode=viewprofile&u=2716

This morning we did have about 2830 members, but it looks like several hundred were deleted in the member number 2600 area, and all member numbers above that were changed to a lower number. We now only have 2630 members.

Looks like your ID was deleted when a block of spammers was taken out.

[jo]

From the Google cache, http://www.google.com/search?q=cache:Xa1pzzPFYbcJ:www.hhplace.org I can see that in that thread, http://www.hhplace.org/hhboard/viewtopic.php?t=5928 that post number 77 was made at 2006 Apr 02, Sunday, 14:25 but when you look at the thread as it exists now, the post with that Date and Time stamp is only number 64 in the thread, and the link to page 5 gives an error message.

So at least 13 messages are missing from that thread alone, and they will be from several different (but new) members.

[jo]

From http://66.249.93.104/search?q=cache:Xa1pzzPFYbcJ:www.hhplace.org it appears that new member azbus is also missing, previously in the database as member number http://www.hhplace.org/hhboard/profile.php?mode=viewprofile&u=2785 and now nowhere to be seen, and all posts from that member have also vanished. Again, this morning there were 2830+ members, and now only 2630 are listed.

[ShockQueen]

Two HUNDRED users are gone? That's quite a bit. I just hope many others who joined recently weren't wiped out cavalierly as well.

[hoverfly]

Mistakes are bound to happen, however the spamers should halved been removed as soon they showed up. Unfortunately when the block was removed some legit people were removed as well. I my self have not done any removal of such, but I am sorry that it happened. Fracken spanmers!!!

[Dawn HH]

Major Bummer!!! Please be careful when deleting SPAMS---we need all of the legitamate posters that we have got. Cheers--- Dawn HH

[jmc]

LE -- It sounds like you were the unfortunate victim of spam cleanup gone awry. Althougn I have no involvement with actually removing spam (other than occasionally reporting it) I can say for certainty that this was no fault of your own. Your thread was interesting and it made a lot of us do some thinking -- as evidenced by the five pages worth of replies it gathered in the short time it was here. I hope your thread can be reconstructed in its entirety -- losing posts like yours is disheartening. As you have no doubt noticed, this board is under a ceaseless attack from spammers who use it to drop links to their scummy pharmaceutical, porn and other worthless sites. Their practices are expressly forbidden by the terms of service governing this board. But that doesn't stop them, they just keep posting waves of their inane drivel. The admins of the board have appointed new moderators with the power to delete this nonsense but it has got to be like trying to bail out the Titanic with a teacup! I do not know where this spam situation is leading or what effect it will have on this board in the end. I can only hope it will all work out somehow. I find a lot of material of interest here and some really interesting people -- since this is a European board it has an international flavor and I enjoy the interaction with people from all over the world. Here in the American Midwest, things are pretty generic (and for the most part I like that) but there is a great big world out there and this board gives me a glimpse of it. Since I don't travel much and will never set foot (regardless of heel height or style -- had to tie that in somewhere) on an airplane, this is probably the only way I will experience any contact with people from outside Michigan. LE -- I hope you will bear with us as our admins deal with these difficulties. The problems are not of their doing.

[Jeff]

OMG what have I done... :-( I got a bit to eager cleaing up spam and simply used a wrong query.. I'll try and restore as many of you as I can tonight, so don't make to many new post if you re-signed up because the links between these post and your name will be lost. Again I'm very sorry this happened. You have the spammers (and clumsy me being in a rush) to blaim. Jeff

[jmc]

Jeff, I'm blaming the spammers. If they were not pushing their garbage on us you wouldn't have to go around cleaning it up.

[Jeff]

Hi guys 'n gals, I'm sorry to say that restoring the deleted records is not going to happen.. Seems the backup of the user table is not quite usable.. (Somehow this often is the case with backups, when you need them the most, they let you down. ) Anyway, I hope not too many of the regular posters where removed and lost the links to their posts. Sorry for the inconvenience.. Jeff

[jo]

All of their posts are gone from the threads too. So most of the affected threads have a one sided conversation now. What a disaster.

[jo]

From searching in Google, it looks like le752 Joined: 2006 Mar 13 and by April 1st had Posts: 14.

I cannot find any later data than that. Google doesn't have a copy of that long thread to rebuild it from either.

I have manged to rebuild the thread that azbus started, see http://www.hhplace.org/hhboard/viewtopic.php?t=6229 , but not any others.

[jo]

Who else is missing, other than le752 (2716) and azbus (2785) now?

[jmc]

If it helps, I have the first four pages of le752's thread "just discovered my boyfriend wears women's shoes..." and the first page of azbus's thread "Help my husband wants to wear womans boots." in HTML format on my system. I had saved them off to read them offline so my copies are verbatim as of 04/02/2006. I can make these available to a moderator who wishes to re-construct these threads.

[jo]

I have already reconstructed the azbus thread from what Google had, if you would like to check it. http://www.hhplace.org/hhboard/viewtopic.php?t=6229

[jmc]

Jo-- Looks like your re-construction of azbus' thread is quite accurate. I checked it against my saved copy and everything is there. There are a few formatting differences (your re-construction has more paragraph breaks) but the wording is accurate. I only have a copy of the thread through fogborkenvv's post on Apr 01, 2006 (double post) so my check ended there. I still have le752's thread up through Apr 02 (4 pages).

[sendra45]

Jo--

Looks like your re-construction of azbus' thread is quite accurate. I checked it against my saved copy and everything is there. There are a few formatting differences (your re-construction has more paragraph breaks) but the wording is accurate. I only have a copy of the thread through fogborkenvv's post on Apr 01, 2006 (double post) so my check ended there.

I still have le752's thread up through Apr 02 (4 pages).

that is fantastic news, would you be able to re-create it for us, it was one of the most valuble threads in my opinion for some time. I am hoping that Le752 will continue to stick with us and keep us posted.

[sam_shoe]

hi, i am a new member here, but dont realy talk on the board but do private, as i a new to all this i was wanting to get to know the board first, but recently my account had been deleted, and i just wondered why, as i have not done anything against the rules, i have read what has been put about deleting fake members, but am unsure if i was deleted as a fake member? is this a private chat room. let me know, thanks sam.

[sendra45]

Sam, dont panic and you are welcome to be here, sorry for any confusion. Although I did not delete you, there has been a bit of a problem. Nigel

[jmc]

Nigel, I am not entirely certain how to re-contstruct le752's thread -- I'm not a moderator, just a regular user. I could re-post each entry as a quote but each entry would appear under my username and that would destroy the interaction between members. I believe this interaction is an essential part of any thread. (I am not even sure a moderator can re-construct a thread -- maybe it takes an admin to do that.) What I have is this -- four HTML files with four support directories generated by "File --> Save Page As. . ." in Mozilla FireFox. They were saved on April 2. I can zip up what I have and e-mail it if that would be of any help. You can "PM" me with an e-mail address if you do not want to post it. I agree, it was an interesting thread. Judging by the five pages of replies it gathered, there is a lot of agreement on that point.

[lil_becs]

I think my friend lil_saz has been deleted too, she doesnt understand why, ill have to explain this situation to her.

[dr1819]

It's physically possible to reconstruct corrupted threads, but it's very time-consuming. Another issue is one of integrity. Current posts with your name are yours, as the system tracks who posts what. Stuff that's e-mailed and manually reconstructed might have a similar check (the e-mail address), but if I were a sysadmin, I'd simply recommend you repost, even recreated the thread, if necessary.

[Guy N. Heels]

Blame it all on the man with the SPAM! Actually, I might just start blaming spamers for all my troubles. But in all seriousness, spam is one of the toughest things to deal with in IT. Unless yer willing to spend an unbelievable amount of time tip-toeing through the tulips, yer likely to just get a little heavy-handed with the delete key and toss out a lot of good stuff with the bad. Jeff, we luv ya anyway.