important Missing addon threads.

[Wallygator]

Just now, Snark said:

There, see?  Hallmark of a good FAQ.  It answers the actual questions people are asking! 

Appreciate your response, but actually, no it doesn't answer actual questions - but it does say that you are not going to answer.  Fair enough, and I accept that.

Next time something breaks on my customer account and they ask why it's not fixed quickly, I'll be sure to use your above answer and let you know how that turns out.

No need to reply further - I get the message - and I'll politely shut up about it.

 

[Kerbart]

Doh. Ctrl+Z. Is it really that hard?

It's ironic that this is a forum dedicated to a space flight simulator. You'd expect people here to realize that things are not always as simple as they seem (one does not get to space by simply flying 100km straight up, after all). And in fairness, most of them do. But some still think that, hey, it's just as undeleting some text in word or excel.

Before criticizing Squad on this, ask yourself a few questions:

• If Squad did this on purpose, why?
• Do you know what actually happened?
• Do you have actual experience in a scenario exactly like this?

I think it's safe to assume a few things here:

• No, Squad did not do this on purpose.
• No, Squad has nothing to gain by prolonging the problem or "not caring about it"
• Yes, Squad is incompetent. In the sense of "nobody knows the inner workings of the database that feeds the forum that is offered as a service to the customers of the game they're selling". Because why would they? They're hired to write software about space flight, create artwork for it, write marketing material for it. No one knows the inner working of the forum software here? Why would they? Are you incompentent because you don't hire a live-in mechanic in your house, in case your car breaks down? So know a bunch 0f people has to dive in, dissect a database they have never seen before, figure out what happened, and try to fix it without making it worse (that last detail puts this a few notches above "troubleshooting a botched excel formula").
• So, fixing it will take time. Because it's a complex issue to fix and because it outside the scope of what anyone at Squad is hired for.

[danfarnsy]

4 hours ago, Snark said:

And of course, there's a natural human reflex to want to do something about it (which in this case you can't), or to try to understand it (which you in this case you also can't, since you don't have the internal technical details of what happened or what's being done to fix it).  It's galling to be ignorant of what's going on, and powerless to do anything about the situation.  Totally natural and understandable, and there's nothing wrong with feeling that way.

So... it's cancer? I know how to cure cancer! My friend knows this doctor who does this thing with this herb... 

Heh. You're right, of course, but it's a little entertaining to see some folks going through the stages of grief over some forum pages. It's not cancer. We can relax. It is a significant amount of work gone, but it's nothing any of us can fix. You know what you can do? Watch trailers for the new Mass Effect game a few more times. Figure out why you stink so much at combat in Elite: Dangerous. You know, important things.

[stibbons]

19 minutes ago, Wallygator said:

Next time something breaks on my customer account and they ask why it's not fixed quickly, I'll be sure to use your above answer and let you know how that turns out.

If you feel like this is significantly impacting your business, then you should get in touch with your TAM. Quote the appropriate part of the SLA that's being violated, and I'm sure they'll be happy to credit your account as per the agreed-upon penalty clause.

[Snark]

26 minutes ago, Wallygator said:

Next time something breaks on my customer account and they ask why it's not fixed quickly, I'll be sure to use your above answer and let you know how that turns out.

Or you could give the longer form, which is essentially what was already said:

"We appreciate the inconvenience that this technical difficulty is causing our customers, and we apologize.  Rest assured that we are working on fixing the problem and will have things restored to normal just as soon as we are able.  We have taken steps to prevent this problem from recurring.  Thank you for your patience."

In all honesty, I gotta say that I've seen a lot of technical outages from various companies over the years-- most of them much better staffed and funded than Squad-- and that's about as much as I've ever seen by way of technical details.  It's very rare to put technical details out there, unless they're really necessary (e.g. for a security breach or something, which this isn't).

It's not unprecedented.  I do recall one major Amazon AWS outage a few years ago, for example, where they actually did send out a technical explanation of just what happened... but the Internet's collective jaws were dropping that they actually did that, because nobody does that.  (Not even Amazon, most of the time.)  I believe the reason they did it on that occasion was that it was a majorly embarrassing screw-up, on a scope many orders of magnitude worse than this little kerfuffle, and throwing open the doors like that was a way of trying to calm down the outrage.  It was an in-extremis move.

Companies generally don't release technical details of screwups because in general, it doesn't help the company, doesn't actually assuage the customers in most cases, and doesn't help resolve the problem any faster.  If going-public-with-minutiae was a thing that was helpful most of the time, companies would be doing it most of the time.

Is it right?  Is it nice?  Should it be different?  I dunno.  I may be too close to the problem, given that I've been working in the software industry for a couple of decades (including operating high-volume customer-facing services), so I've become accustomed to "how it's done".  I'm not really trying to defend the system here, just simply saying that this is generally how things work and Squad's not being atypical here.

[Grenartia]

20 minutes ago, Kerbart said:

Doh. Ctrl+Z. Is it really that hard?

It's ironic that this is a forum dedicated to a space flight simulator. You'd expect people here to realize that things are not always as simple as they seem (one does not get to space by simply flying 100km straight up, after all). And in fairness, most of them do. But some still think that, hey, it's just as undeleting some text in word or excel.

Before criticizing Squad on this, ask yourself a few questions:

• If Squad did this on purpose, why?
• Do you know what actually happened?
• Do you have actual experience in a scenario exactly like this?

I think it's safe to assume a few things here:

• No, Squad did not do this on purpose.
• No, Squad has nothing to gain by prolonging the problem or "not caring about it"
• Yes, Squad is incompetent. In the sense of "nobody knows the inner workings of the database that feeds the forum that is offered as a service to the customers of the game they're selling". Because why would they? They're hired to write software about space flight, create artwork for it, write marketing material for it. No one knows the inner working of the forum software here? Why would they? Are you incompentent because you don't hire a live-in mechanic in your house, in case your car breaks down? So know a bunch 0f people has to dive in, dissect a database they have never seen before, figure out what happened, and try to fix it without making it worse (that last detail puts this a few notches above "troubleshooting a botched excel formula").
• So, fixing it will take time. Because it's a complex issue to fix and because it outside the scope of what anyone at Squad is hired for.

To be fair, you can get to space by flying 100km straight up. Just not orbit. Unless you have a lot of delta-v when you get there. But I digress. Your post is spot on, and this incident is further proof to me that computers run on voodoo. 

[Wallygator]

38 minutes ago, stibbons said:

If you feel like this is significantly impacting your business, then you should get in touch with your TAM. Quote the appropriate part of the SLA that's being violated, and I'm sure they'll be happy to credit your account as per the agreed-upon penalty clause.

And the next time I think about engaging in any debate thread on the forum I will get in touch with myself and snap my forehead with an elastic band!  lol.

 

[stibbons]

Hey, engage away if you like. I would just suggest not using a false equivalence next time.

[Virtualgenius]

Past experience on KSP forum upgrades and failures doesn't place a lot of faith in the process, as many people lost accounts / subscriptions etc. So I will look to be pleasantly surprised when this is resolved. 

No need to reply I too will crawl back under my rock 

 

[Superfluous J]

14 hours ago, Sol Invictus said:

I honestly doubt that. If that was the case, then the whole issue would be resolved in a matter of hours after being noticed. Day or two, at most. Not entire week, and still counting.

 

I can't tell what you're implying here. Do you think Squad has access to the data and is just not bothering to put it back up? But they would if it was against a modders' wishes?

1 hour ago, Wallygator said:

Next time something breaks on my customer account and they ask why it's not fixed quickly, I'll be sure to use your above answer and let you know how that turns out.

I work at a pretty big company and - while the answers are a bit nicer and more wordy - that's essentially what we tell the customers. All the time.

1 hour ago, Snark said:

"We appreciate the inconvenience that this technical difficulty is causing our customers, and we apologize.  Rest assured that we are working on fixing the problem and will have things restored to normal just as soon as we are able.  We have taken steps to prevent this problem from recurring.  Thank you for your patience."

Do we work together?

[MaxxQ]

4 hours ago, Virtualgenius said:

Many hands make light work 

There's also something about too many cooks in the kitchen, as well as too many people working on a problem and it turning into a cluster----.

Sure, I'd like to know what happened, what's going on, and how long it'll take to fix, but I sure as hell ain't going to bug the devs for any of that info.  I don't have a need to know, and neither does anyone else here.

[VaPaL]

@Snark or any other moderator. Since it's possible to merge threads, wouldn't be simplier just to create new ones, temporarily, then merge them together?

Edited January 11, 2017 by VaPaL
Grammar

[Snark]

20 minutes ago, VaPaL said:

@Snark or any other moderator. Since it's possible to merge threads, wouldn't be simplier just to create new ones, temporarily, then merge them together?

Well, there's nothing stopping anyone.  Not a bad idea 

Mod authors are welcome to create new threads if they want to, and the moderator team is happy to merge threads later as needed.

Naturally it would be up to the mod author to decide how much effort they want to put into the OP of the temporary replacement thread, given that it's expected to be throwaway work.  But even if the new OP is just a stub placeholder "hi, this is the temporary thread for ___, here's the download link and source code link and license", at least it would give users a place to 1. download the mod, and 2. talk about it.

[severedsolo]

16 hours ago, Snark said:

Companies generally don't release technical details of screwups because in general, it doesn't help the company, doesn't actually assuage the customers in most cases, and doesn't help resolve the problem any faster.  If going-public-with-minutiae was a thing that was helpful most of the time, companies would be doing it most of the time.

Not just for tech companies. I work for a large financial company, in the pensions billing department. I often have to call people back, and the wording on the task is always "Can you call Mr x back and explain why we haven't collected his premium". 99% of the time, the answer is "because our system doesn't work very well".

The customer doesn't want to hear that though... so usually the conversation goes like this - stuff in brackets is what I'm thinking.

Customer: Why did this happen?

Me: "To be honest, I'm not entirely sure" (I know exactly why, but it's complicated and you just want me to tell you I've fixed it).

Customer: Ok, so what happens now?

Me: I'll fix it for you and make sure it doesn't happen again. (I'm going to put your policy on manual collections, but you just want me to tell you I've fixed it).

[Angelo Kerman]

@sal_vager Do you have any information on the status of the thread restoration? Do we need to create new threads at this point?

[sal_vager]

27 minutes ago, Angel-125 said:

@sal_vager Do you have any information on the status of the thread restoration? Do we need to create new threads at this point?

Yes actually, I just got some info.

Squads IT is currently investigating several options but the work is ongoing, the lost threads definitely have not been forgotten but this is going to take time, so they ask that we are patient while they work to find the best option to recover the affected threads without interfering with any of the posts and threads that have been made since the data loss.

Edit: By all means feel free to make a new thread, they can be added to the old threads later.

So please be patient, they are still working on it

[Terwin]

17 hours ago, Grenartia said:

To be fair, you can get to space by flying 100km straight up. Just not orbit. Unless you have a lot of delta-v when you get there. But I digress. Your post is spot on, and this incident is further proof to me that computers run on voodoo. 

No voodoo, Magic Smoke.

2 clear indicators: 

1) no dead animals or dried herbs hanging on the wall at Best Buy

2) when smoke comes out of any part of your computer, that part stops working(and usually the rest of the computer too, but you can probably fix it by just replacing that one part).

 

(Seriously, creating microchips looks suspiciously like 'Start with a single crystal of Virgin Silicon, and in a purified room, apply potions A-R in order, using the correct magic pattern and purification step for each, then take your magic crystal, attach gold wires and put it into a protective shell to keep it in a pristine state'.)

Edited January 11, 2017 by Terwin

[King Something]

Squad's IT pirate-ninjas do their best and are working diligently, please wait warmly until threads restoration is finished.

[Angelo Kerman]

14 minutes ago, sal_vager said:

Yes actually, I just got some info.

Squads IT is currently investigating several options but the work is ongoing, the lost threads definitely have not been forgotten but this is going to take time, so they ask that we are patient while they work to find the best option to recover the affected threads without interfering with any of the posts and threads that have been made since the data loss.

Edit: By all means feel free to make a new thread, they can be added to the old threads later.

So please be patient, they are still working on it

I appreciate the response, thanks.

[VaPaL]

@sal_vager and moderation team. The posting rules and other threads on this reagard shouldn't also be temporarily recreated? I mean, the longer it takes for the old one to return, the bigger are the chances of someone breaking a rule. (new modders [posting rules] or new users [update requests]).

If this is already been done, sorry for the annoyance.

[sal_vager]

15 minutes ago, VaPaL said:

@sal_vager and moderation team. The posting rules and other threads on this reagard shouldn't also be temporarily recreated? I mean, the longer it takes for the old one to return, the bigger are the chances of someone breaking a rule. (new modders [posting rules] or new users [update requests]).

If this is already been done, sorry for the annoyance.

They can be, though they are far less important then your threads

[Frybert]

28 minutes ago, VaPaL said:

@sal_vager and moderation team. The posting rules and other threads on this reagard shouldn't also be temporarily recreated? I mean, the longer it takes for the old one to return, the bigger are the chances of someone breaking a rule. (new modders [posting rules] or new users [update requests]).

If this is already been done, sorry for the annoyance.

Temporary add-on posting rules post here:

 

[Climberfx]

So, knowing will take more time that i expected, here goes the link to new Omicron Thread. Moderators should merge the original lost one with this one, if restored.

Thank you!

 

Edited January 11, 2017 by Climberfx

[politas]

And here's a temporary thread for the CKAN. Any chance I can get it stickied?

 

[Red Iron Crown]

3 hours ago, politas said:

And here's a temporary thread for the CKAN. Any chance I can get it stickied?

 

Done.