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[sumghai]

[MOD - Some posts have been removed and/or redacted due to personal remarks. Let's all keep it civil, please.]

[Red Iron Crown]

19 hours ago, AverageJoeGuy said:

It seems a few weeks ago, @llanthas had his entre posting history (which dated back to 2011)  deleted by a moderator for posting some criticism about Take Two.

That is not accurate at all, you are assuming malice where none exists. We do not remove posts because we disagree with the content of them, ever. This incident was an accident that was reported by the moderator in question immediately after it occurred to see if it could be reversed.

19 hours ago, AverageJoeGuy said:

What can @SQUAD do to assure the users of this forum that this insane abuse of power is impossible to happen again?

Hyperbolic bolded text aside, I can comment a bit on what we've done to prevent further instances:

1. We have a tool for handling spambots that bulk deletes their posts. This may seem excessive if you've never moderated a forum, but a spambot is a bot, so it doesn't operate like a human poster would. It might post a hundred posts a minute until it is stopped, so bulk handling of the posts is a requirement.
2. That tool has since been modified to hide those posts rather than delete them. To a regular user this appears identical, but a hidden post can be restored if desired while a deleted one is gone forever.
3. Admins have retained their delete permissions, and the duty now falls to them to manually delete all the hidden spam posts rather than having it done automatically.

It's unfortunate that these revisions have caused more work to be created for the mod team (we are, after all, volunteers with limited time to devote to the work). But given the recent mishap it was felt that this is the better alternative to potentially impacting a legitimate user the way this incident has.

I'd like to thank @llanthas for being a class act about this incident. I've privately apologized on behalf of the mod team about it; since this whole thing is under public discussion now I'll do the same thing publicly: We're deeply sorry that this happened.

[linuxgurugamer]

17 hours ago, AverageJoeGuy said:

So you've had issues with hard deletes before, and yet its still a thing that goes on? I'm also seeing now that you have had a few moderator accounts be compromised. Just imagine the chaos it could have caused if someone decided to break in and abuse that 'button'.

 

Also that's a lousy backup plan to have. Restore some content by deleting a bunch of others.

 

 Until you have worked with production data on a production database, you really can't comment as to the validity of a back up plan or not. The back up plan they have is as valid as any other backup plan, they have accepted certain limitations and what they can do.  The amount of work it would take to restore the data onto a secondary server and pull out a specific uses posts can be extreme in certain cases. It can cost a lot of money, and it usually isn't worth it. 

[Deddly]

This thread doesn't really make much sense anymore because OP removed his own posts, so I'll go ahead and lock it to avoid any confusion. Please let me know if you would like it unlocked for any reason.