PSA: CW downtime and data loss

b/Website News publicado por u/novenary August 09, 2015, 09:54:43 PM

PSA: CW downtime and data loss

Tonight, a former admin and co-founder of the site who had stepped down but was still trusted with root access to the server broke down and deleted the entire filesystem of the server. I had to restore a week-old backup to get it back up and running, so a lot of posts will be missing. We apologize for the trouble.

User has been permanently banned for site vandalism and multiple episodes of defamatory content (although the latter would only have resulted in 3 days of moderator preview and no IRC access if only that had occurred). If you would like to know more details about what happened, there are IRC logs available below:

#codewalrus: http://pastebin.com/k9ecpSQ0
#omnimaga: http://chat.eeems.ca/?server=irc.omnimaga.org%206667&channel=omnimaga&date=Sun%20Aug%2009%202015#1439143250483 (mirror link)

Your walrified penguin-cat admin,
Streetwalrus

Last Edit: August 18, 2015, 12:19:40 AM by DJ Omnimaga

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u/DarkestEx August 09, 2015, 09:55:46 PM

Atleast great you fixed it soo quickly. Good work @Streetwalrus

u/123outerme August 09, 2015, 09:59:12 PM

Thank you very much, staff, for working hard to restore the site and bring back my crappy posts

In timely fashion, too!
'Tis a shame that this happened regardless of how fast it was fixed, though

u/Snektron August 09, 2015, 10:04:13 PM

Nicely fixed

I'm sad someone has to come to this solution though, more when they're even an ex admin.

u/c4ooo August 09, 2015, 10:06:08 PM

I am afraid to say this was partly my fault. I was talking to pimath about lack of interest in the code golf on omnimaga, and the conversation quickly changed to the lack of activity on omnimaga in general. Pimath claimed this was the fault of this website,(which I agree is partly true) and that he was naive in starting it. Although I got to say, I did not expect his grief to turn into the anger that it did. $:-\$

u/123outerme August 09, 2015, 10:16:41 PM

Quote from: c4ooo on August 09, 2015, 10:06:08 PM
I am afraid to say this was partly my fault. I was talking to the staff member about lack of interest in the code golf on omnimaga, and the conversation quickly changed to the lack of activity on omnimaga in general. The staff member claimed this was the fault of this website,(which I agree is partly true) and that he was naive in starting it. Although I got to say, I did not expect his grief to turn into the anger that it did. $:-\$

It wasn't your fault at all. You didn't delete a website. Due to the fact that he quickly changed the conversation, it looked like he was looking for a reason to lash out. And it's entirely possible that people could've used both sites at the same time, if they wanted to. But the fact that people chose CW over Omnimaga said something about Omnimaga, not CW.

u/princetonlion.tibd August 09, 2015, 10:57:07 PM

At least it's fixed now :-)

EDIT: Tapatalk says Omni only has 70~ followers, when I remember that it was in the thousands :/

Last Edit: August 09, 2015, 11:00:29 PM by princetonlion.tibd

u/Dream of Omnimaga August 09, 2015, 11:08:51 PM

Quote from: c4ooo on August 09, 2015, 10:06:08 PM
I am afraid to say this was partly my fault. I was talking to pimath about lack of interest in the code golf on omnimaga, and the conversation quickly changed to the lack of activity on omnimaga in general. Pimath claimed this was the fault of this website,(which I agree is partly true) and that he was naive in starting it. Although I got to say, I did not expect his grief to turn into the anger that it did. $:-\$

Don't blame yourself for this. You did not delete anything on CodeWalrus server yourself.

As for the site, it's true that it affected Omnimaga activity, but several CW members no longer felt welcome there or were unhappy about the direction Omni took since 2012 and some of the controversial admin decisions that were taken since then, especially moderation-wise starting in 2013, and were unable to adapt to the change. This often caused conflicts with admins. Certain CodeWalrus members are more active here than they were on Omni during the last year before CW was even being considered. It doesn't mean that Omnimaga is bad, but unfortunately, the members who left were by far the most active of their users and didn't want to be forced to adapt to a mentality they don't fit in. So they gave up and branched out.

Today, the remaining Omnimaga members are either people who were OK with the changes in direction or people who joined after the bulk of changes had taken place. Drama on Omnimaga has decreased considerably as a result because most remaining users are fine with administration, so if the admins there became more active on a regular basis then they could revive easily with a new userbase.

Anyway, all posts from August 2nd to 9th will have to be reposted. However, I got a backup of the statsgraph from today, so due to how it displays stats, I could manage to restore all daily posting statistics up to August 8th. I also got a backup of all walrus sprites, so I'll probably repost the ones that are missing soon.

Anyway, I'm soon gonna edit the first post of the topic with IRC logs explaining what happened and I'm gonna make a new topic soon about why CodeWalrus opened in October 2014. We were not very transparent about that when we opened so I apologize for that, but it was because it was still in the heat of the moment and we feared it would result into a massive community flame war, so we waited, but many people have figured out by now.

u/Unicorn August 10, 2015, 12:41:11 AM

Oh. Wow. That is VERY suprising.

Good job street on getting everything back up though.

I actually thought that Omnimaga activity was increasing this past month, though. Wasn't this semi pimaths brainchild? I don't get that. But done is done, I guess.

Good job remaining admins

u/brentmaas August 10, 2015, 01:01:05 AM

I'm still stunned from @Cumred_Snektron 's message this afternoon.

Also, we should sign up pimath at Guiness World Records for biggest pile of salt ever to be collected.

u/Dream of Omnimaga August 10, 2015, 01:06:02 AM

Quote from: Unicorn on August 10, 2015, 12:41:11 AM
Oh. Wow. That is VERY suprising.

Good job street on getting everything back up though. I actually thought that Omnimaga activity was increasing this past month, though. Wasn't this semi pimaths brainchild? I don't get that. But done is done, I guess.

Good job remaining admins

Pi co-founded CW but without realizing it would hurt Omni activity this bad (even though that knowing history, a significant decrease was inevitable). He slowly became upset at this situation. He seemed like a close friend, though, and someone still interested in helping CW, which is why we didn't realize he could go that far. It was not the first time he blamed CW for this, though, but it was often done out of anger after troubles with his parents.

That said, I'll admit that I didn't know if he still had server access or not, other than his webspace. I am not in charge of server maintenance so I am not familiar with that. aeTIos probably still has webspace there too then.

u/Unicorn August 10, 2015, 04:22:51 AM

Hmm, interesting. What did cumred say, @brentmaas ?

u/Dream of Omnimaga August 10, 2015, 04:23:52 AM

I'm fairly sure he just told him that the site was defaced by the guy, since Brentmaas hadn't been around in a while.

u/Unicorn August 10, 2015, 04:53:05 AM

Ah, and BTW CW actually made me go make an omnimaga acount, because of you, DJ, and codegolf getting posted here.

u/Dream of Omnimaga August 10, 2015, 05:21:33 AM

Well I guess it's a good thing that you discover the rest of the community

. Also all three sites are different in style so it's easier to find one that fits your needs more. Also pimath is not Omnimaga so a site should not be judged just for one person. But I can understand that certain comments can make people be worried.