Oolite Bulletins

Thanks to everybody involved for bringing the board back online!

The improvements seem to be good as well, although I still have to get used to them.

The not-so-good news is that a considerable number of posts seem to have fallen victim to the hack, I guess mainly from the early days of the boards, judging from the fact that Aegidian's post count has particularly suffered (and Ahruman's as well), while my own count seems unharmed (started posting in January 2007). A side-effect is that I now appear to be the most prolific poster here.

Oh, and I found it deeply disturbing to see everything go down bit by bit during December 31st. First I couldn't access the main page, but still the forum pages. Then those went away as well, but I could just open this very topic one time, and finally not even the hacked silly snowy page appeared anymore, but only various 404 error pages. Not a good thing to witness.

I didn't believe you and had to go look! So that was your dastardly plan after all, you knew you couldn't catch Ahruman any other way...

I wonder how many of the old members who haven't posted for a few years have had their posts wiped to zero? I wonder in fact what historical archives have we lost?

The second accidental cleansing of the BB!

Commander McLane wrote:

The not-so-good news is that a considerable number of posts seem to have fallen victim to the hack, I guess mainly from the early days of the boards, judging from the fact that Aegidian's post count has particularly suffered (and Ahruman's as well), while my own count seems unharmed (started posting in January 2007). A side-effect is that I now appear to be the most prolific poster here. :oops:

I think the old board’s post count included stuff that had been pruned (remember, some subforums used to be auto-pruned). If you search aegidian’s posts, you’ll find entries back to June 2004.

Oh, and the second-oldest non-test account is NoSleep (of “Oolite Theme Music by” fame), whose latest post was in August 2006.

Commander McLane wrote:

Oh, and I found it deeply disturbing to see everything go down bit by bit during December 31st. First I couldn't access the main page, but still the forum pages. Then those went away as well, but I could just open this very topic one time, and finally not even the hacked silly snowy page appeared anymore, but only various 404 error pages. Not a good thing to witness.

Yes... it was distressing.

I must have missed it by scant minutes - as I logged off around 8pm to play on the Wii with my kids - by the time I tried to log on to wish everybody a happy New Year - it was gone - like a big crater left by the Borg...

20.00Z, on new years eve… midnight one time zone east of Moscow, I reckon.

missed it by seconds then. In some ways I'm glad - I'd have fretted for the whole of New Year! (as sad as that sounds it's true!)

My experience of it was pretty worrisome. I was away on holiday when it all happened. Normally I access the BB from my browser homepage (which consists of a page of links to the sites I use), so when I came home I clicked on the link and got a 404 error. Suspecting a minor glitch I left it till the next morning to try again, with the same result. No idea what was going on at all. After a couple of days I really started to worry and so I tried a few other things, and eventually just typed Aegidian.org into the address bar, which is when I saw the temporary page explaining the problem.
Those first two or three days were a nightmare, though, in the dark without a clue, and wondering if I'd ever get a big chunk of my life back.

El Viejo wrote:

Commander McLane wrote:

Oh, and I found it deeply disturbing to see everything go down bit by bit during December 31st. First I couldn't access the main page, but still the forum pages. Then those went away as well, but I could just open this very topic one time, and finally not even the hacked silly snowy page appeared anymore, but only various 404 error pages. Not a good thing to witness.

Yes... it was distressing.

I cannot but agree with the agreement.
Perhaps we need to make t-shirts: "I survived the 2010 New Years' Eve hacker attack" or something of the sort...

On a more practical note:
There's a few things on the shiny new that I wish were more like the clunky old.
On the old board, threads with new post that I chose not to read did not show up again on the next login (unless, of course, there were more posts between the logins). Now they appear to stay in perpetuity. Since I occasionally venture into the no internet access parts of the world for up to several weeks at a time, I'm reluctant to start fiddling with the 'only display post from time period X' settings. Is there a 'mark as read' function hidden somewhere that could be activated? Alternatively, could we revert to the old way?
Speaking of reverting, the old board by default opened links in a new tab, whereas new board uses the same. Easy to get around by middle clicking, I know, but I still vastly prefer for links to get new tabs (and that's a general preference, not just here).

However, any such tinkering with settings will have to wait until after the hard working Board Restoration Worker(s) return from a well deserved week or two in the Caribbean...

Agree with both of your gripes, CR.

Thargoid wrote:

There is a "mark topics read" link on each forum list (top right, just above the topic headers), and a "mark forums read" link on the main page (similar place). Those should do what you are looking for.

I also like the remembering of unread topics. The old board already had the "mark topics read" button but I never understood its use as they became marked as read anyhow after logging off.

I just looked in the user preferences, but there is no option for the user. There is only an option to ignore older posts.

PS. The only minor thing (between all the improvements) is that you are logged off quite fast. On pressing the submit button for this message I had to login again and my typed message was gone. (I got it back by hopping a few pages back in the browser)

PS2. Thargoid, how is it going with your headache? Must be heavy by now

Ah well... strokes and folks and all that… more than anything, I’m just really pleased to have the forum back again.
A case of ‘you don’t know what you’ve got ’til it’s gone’, I think.

It's the little things you miss, like checking if E.V's still on-line just before going to bed at Lots past Midnight.

Thargoid wrote:

I have absolutely the opposite opinion there. On the old board, if you sat down to view any post (or even a PM sometimes) you had to plough through everything that was unread or else it lost its new tag and you had to try and work out manually next time what you had and hadn't read. That was always a pain for me.

Also there were times when it would seemingly randomly just mark all posts as read, or indeed if you lost your connection and went back then all was gone. Also you should find now if someone makes a new post on a thread you've already read whilst you're online, the tags appear and if you click on the new post tag you get taken to the "current" new post, not the original one.

For me this way is much better, and indeed much more like every other board I know.

There is a "mark topics read" link on each forum list (top right, just above the topic headers), and a "mark forums read" link on the main page (similar place). Those should do what you are looking for.

You are quite right. The random occurrences of the board deciding you had read everything were quite annoying. Having experimented a bit with what buttons do what I've found a way to read the board that emulates my old style close enough not to make any difference, and with the 'mark as read' buttons located (don't know how I managed to miss them), I retract my previous statements completely.

(Except for the link in new tab thing. I still prefer that.)