Welcome Back!

[Leonidas]

Whew...

The dust has cleared and all I see is wasteland...

I think the site owners should consider some form of "fail safe" mechanism so this doesn't happen again.

Like:

"Do you want to delete the "Creation" forum?"

"Yes. No."

Person clicks "Yes"

"Are you really sure you want to delete the "Creation" forum?"

"Yes. No."

Person clicks "yes".

"Are you really, really sure you want to delete the "Creation" forum?"

....

Well, you get the idea

[Exile]

Double Whammy . . . . .

I see that damage was sustained by the forum. Odd. My own comp suffered severe damage too.

I lost everything.

Time to start downloading. again.

[techumseh]

Before we start rebuilding the forums, I'd like to talk security. What guarantee do we have that this won't happen again?

In the "olden days" most files were stored on various individual's own web sites. Nowadays, we have tended to use the forums themselves for storage, even for scenario files. The problem is lack of redundancy, leaving us open to massive loss.

Let's think the unthinkable. What would we do if Apolyton went under? Or their servers were destroyed in a fire or earthquake?

While I appreciate Leo's efforts here, I think we need to hear from the owners. I'd like to hear about the security and back up provisions of Apolyton, current and planned. Why should we rebuild our community on Apolyton and not somewhere else?

[typhoon]

Let's think the unthinkable. What would we do if Apolyton went under? Or their servers were destroyed in a fire or earthquake?

We'd move over to CDG.

[curtsibling]

I want to echo Tech's points in this regard.

[MarkG]

having frequent backups isnt easy when your compressed backup files are 14GB

beyond that, we learn from our mistakes and will improve the situation

[curtsibling]

Accidents happen.

And we must admit, this is something that has never happened in recent memory...

We will look back and laugh one day!

[Locutus]

Not a SL member but I've been following this whole thing with great interest for the obvious reason that this could've happened to anyone...

Originally posted by techumseh
Before we start rebuilding the forums, I'd like to talk security. What guarantee do we have that this won't happen again?

Well, let's see, Markos and Dan having been running civilization websites for 9 years now and this is the first time ever something remotely like this has happened, and it was a freak-accident. Is that enough guarantee for you?

Let's think the unthinkable. What would we do if Apolyton went under? Or their servers were destroyed in a fire or earthquake?

Don't worry, Apolyton will never go under as long as there is an active community interested in the site. What's going to happen to it? Financial problems? Until recently, this site was making losses and Markos and Dan had to keep pumping money into it to keep it running, they never saw that as an objection. If the site starts to make losses again, someone will keep paying the bills (I'd be happy to jump in myself if necessary, and I know at least dozens of others with me). Owner health problems? We have 2 owners, if something were to happen to one of them (heaven forbid!) the other will continue to keep the site running. Fire? Earthquake? Apocalypse? Surely, you don't think that the back-ups that are currently being used to restore the SL forums are saved on the same system as the main site? In case you do, I'd like to remind you of the harddisk crash this site suffered from a few years ago: it took a few days to replace the broken disk and restore the backups, but after that everything returned to normal with no data-loss to speak off...

I understand your concerns, I've considered these doom-scenarios myself (I'm sure everyone has at some point), but I don't think there's really anything to be worried about.

This community has had the incredible bad luck that the worst-case scenario occured: an irreversable partial data-loss (a full loss of all data is actually easier to deal with than a partial one), just days before the monthly backup. But the price of it is not all that high: only some of the data of the past 3 weeks has been lost. That's all, everything else will be restored no problem, it will just take a while to sort things out (exactly because this is the first time ever that this has happened). I've experienced similar problems on other sites and you'd be surprised how easy it is to recover from a few weeks dataloss, it's really not all that bad. Everything or almost everything of any importance that has been posted in the past few weeks (especially files and stuff) will still be present on people's computers, either in browser caches or as regular files, because you don't usually delete important stuff.

Loosing 3 weeks of activity feels like a very bad thing and dangerous development, especially right after it happened, but when you look bad at things a few weeks/months from now I assure you, you won't feel so bad about it. Yesterday will always be seen as a bad day for the SL, but hey, if that's the worst thing that could ever happen... It may even be that some good things come from it as well: I already saw a discussion about how maybe some threads could be organised better. This may be the best opportunity you'll ever get to reorganise some things.

The only way to really make future freak-accidents like this less painful is to make more frequent back-ups. But before you ask for that, you have to realise that a backup requires the site (or more accurately, the forums) to be down for almost half a day. Of course, that may not be a big deal for you as you live in an American timezone and the back-up process almost always takes place in the late night/early morning in American timezones. But Apolyton is a global site with people from literally every continent in the world visiting, and here in Europe and in other parts of the world we do notice the downtimes, and it's an annoyance every time it happens (even if everyone understands the importance of it). I don't think an increase in the backup frequency would go over well with most of the rest of the site, especially considering how rarely there is actually a need for it and how limited the dataloss.

If you were to move the SL community elsewhere, you'd have to pump a lot of money into it to keep it running while offering the same quality of service that Apolyton offers, and you'd probably still have the problem of only being able to make back-ups once a month (at least not without causing a serious annoyance to a large portion of the community).

Give the owners a little time to restore the backups (you'll need that data anyway if you wanted to move elsewhere) and to make improvements. You can always make an assessment of the situation later. I'm confident that once everything is sorted out, you'll be able to look back and laugh about this...

[beingofone]

I received a picture of the person responsible.

[beingofone]

This could be viewed as a loss.
It can also be viewed as a new beginning.

[curtsibling]

This is a good time to restructure our forum.

Funny that we were looking to add new emphasis in design
to the place, now we have a good chance to do this!

One would be to have the new unit threads linked in a master-thread.

Also add permenant tips and scenario building threads.

And a permenant thread about the the news and reviews.

Not to forget the compo either, it should have a perma-thread!

What sez youse?

[Arthedain]

I conqur your excellency.

[typhoon]

One would be to have the new unit threads linked in a master-thread.

Hear, hear

EDIT: A contents/reference page at the start of each thread (to be updated weekly) so as to make finding units easier would be nice. If it's too much work to handle, I'd volunteer for the job.

Also add permenant tips and scenario building threads.

No tips in the main forums please, remember what caused the muddle ...

Instead, we could have a subforum like the old Graphics Workshop...

And a permenant thread about the the news and reviews.

Quite, though the backlog of our many exciting events could make sifting through it tedious

Not to forget the compo either, it should have a perma-thread!

Can't argue with this one either


Also I'd like to propose a forum for scenario updates, as well as a general FAQ/request thread for help.

[St Leo]

Originally posted by curtsibling
I think we should have:

Non-Unit Thread

Sci-Fi/Fantasy Units

Ancient/Pre-Steam Units

Steam-Age Units

WW1 Units

WW2 Units

Coldwar/Modern Units

Are we agreed? I was going to nix the idea, but there's a chance we won't get any attachments from the post-Dec 26 era, so we should probably retire the old superthreads and start new ones.

I'd rather avoid a separate forum for Graphics threads, as I think that would result in a net reduction in traffic.

In fact, at this point it might be a good idea to merge Creation with PBEM. I'll raise the idea once the restoration is finished.

[biru biru]

Originally posted by St Leo

Originally posted by curtsibling
I think we should have:

Non-Unit Thread

Sci-Fi/Fantasy Units

Ancient/Pre-Steam Units

Steam-Age Units

WW1 Units

WW2 Units

Coldwar/Modern Units

Are we agreed? I was going to nix the idea, but there's a chance we won't get any attachments from the post-Dec 26 era, so we should probably retire the old superthreads and start new ones.

I'd rather avoid a separate forum for Graphics threads, as I think that would result in a net reduction in traffic.

In fact, at this point it might be a good idea to merge Creation with PBEM. I'll raise the idea once the restoration is finished.

Recommend additional 'alternative' units thread; for animals, anime characters, smilies, dinasaurs and ants, etc. Might not be as popular as the others, but these units get made and they don't quite fit into the other groups.


Maybe threads for cites, icons, sounds? Might make surfing for these items easier for scenario builders.