Welcome Back!

[Patine]

Yes, why have most of us been demoted?

[curtsibling]

The loss of the forums took all our posts with it...

[Heresson]

If I don't get my posts back, I'll feel free to launch a tidal wave of recovery spam.

[curtsibling]

Spamming up the new structure is probably an unwise move.

All will be well again, just wait and see.

[Mercator]

Originally posted by Heresson
If I don't get my posts back, I'll feel free to launch a tidal wave of recovery spam.

You know what I've told you before. Be patient until the backups have been restored. If your postcount isn't back after then we'll have to figure something out. Spamming isn't gonna help you in any case.

[Broken_Erika]

just out of curiosity, how many posts does it take to get the title "emperor"

[AGRICOLA]

This is a bit of an academic exercise on my part to try to figure out some of the apparent discrepancies in the number of lost posts (i.e. I was bored last night). There is a possibility that what follows is pure BS, thought up by a SF deprived mind, so please do not take a hypothesis as gospel truth.


1. This exercise was started by the following e-mail from Apolyton in response to my e-mail to the “ticket” office.

……………In essence, as backups are put in place your post count will rise but it will not return to its exact former level. At the same, follow-up with us on this -- you can just send a quick reply to this particular trouble ticket.

Thank you for your continued patience.

----------
Daniel Quick

Aside from wondering about the meaning? of the second sentence, I concluded that we will get get credit only for posts that can be recovered.

2. Although no one at Poly has said this, it seems logical that the post counting algorithm must be able to keep track of posts that exist at the present and posts which existed a few years ago but have now been removed. For simplicity, let’s call these “live” and “dead” posts, respectively. Members’ post counts consist of the sum of their live and their dead posts (if any).

3. The dead posts were in threads that have been removed from Poly in order to keep the site to a manageable size. The removal process appears to be selective, so that there are a few live threads that date back to 2000. However, I would guesstimate that the majority of live threads are not much older than two years.

It is immaterial whether the removed threads are cached somewhere or deleted. When threads are removed, a member’s posts in the removed threads must be counted and added to his existing count of dead posts.

Posts which cannot be recovered after the accidental deletion of the SL forum fall within neither the dead nor the live category. As far as the algorithm is concerned, these lost posts are neither dead (they did not exist 2 or more years ago), nor are they live (they do not exist now). This may explain why

as backups are put in place your post count will rise but it will not return to its exact former level

3. If my reasoning is correct, no one has lost more posts than they have accumulated by posting in the SL forum since the most recent removal of threads. This would account for why SL veterans did not lose thousands of posts when the forum went down and why some have kept their their rank while others have been demoted. For example, if their dead post count plus live posts on forums other than SL warrants King, they have stayed at that rank. If, however they have gained King rank in the last years mainly through posting on SL, they have suffered a temporary demotion.

4. The bottom line appears to be that any SL posts after the date to which the forum can be restored are not going to be credited unless the powers that be are prepared to alter members’ dead post counts.

[Mercator]

Originally posted by Broken_Erika
just out of curiosity, how many posts does it take to get the title "emperor"

See the FAQ:

http://apolyton.net/forums/misc.php?s=&action=faq&page=4#45

3001

[Boco]

In essence, as backups are put in place your post count will rise but it will not return to its exact former level.

Continuing the academic reflections, there's something odd about this. I recently broke the 1000 mark, which fortunately the cached posts verify. Yet my current post count is 660 with a rate of 0.42 a day. The rate sounds about right. So that's about 2.3 years of lost post count, as a result of the loss of only 1 month's posts.

Mercator
I've been found out! (that's picture's a few years old though)

A current image!
[Edit]
Removed 'illegal' link .
[/Edit]

[MarkG]

http://apolyton.net/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=132298

[CapTVK]

Agh! and I was slowly eeking my way to emperorship. At my current post rate that process has been set back a year.

[AGRICOLA]

I believe that your count will go back to nearly what you had once the forum is restored. I think that we need only to wait until the forum actually comes back on line.

[CapTVK]

[quote]

.....

Due to the deficiency of our backup system (partially caused by the fact that Apolyton's data currently exceeds 20GB) we are able to recover only posts up to a month ago and attachments of up to 3 months ago.

.....

[quote]

Would that mean all the graphics predating jan 2005 are gone? That's a sizeable hit .

[Broken_Erika]

ouch, that is not good,

[Boco]

CapTVK, for some reason that was my initial reaction, too, but I think it actually means that gfx from Feb-Apr can't be recovered. Earlier ones can.