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I see via many comments and support tickets that a lot of users were surprised about that timing of the purge happening. I apologize for not being more transparent about the timing of it. We don't like to specify a specific time of an upcoming purge as it can vary by journal and specifying a specific start time has caused issues in the past.
That said we should have announced or put into the notifications for the re-start of the purge that the date would be Saturday 3/18 not exactly 14 days from the date the emails were sent as many users expected it to be. We based that date on giving users an extra 2 weeks from the date the purge was supposed to initially run on due to the outage we incurred.
The original date for accounts to purge was supposed to be March 4th. But since we went offline on 2/27 and had to roll data back to before the purge initially started we obviously didn't purge accounts on that date. When we were finally up and stable enough to restart the purge, we decided to set accounts so they would purge on 3/18, exactly 2 weeks after the original purge and still 10 full days after notifications were set. This allowed users not only the 9 days we were up before the outage, but an additional 10 days after the additional notification to recover their accounts. We felt that this gave users ample time to recover their accounts and included a full weekend before the purge.
The mistake we made was in communication. We did discuss this in a public forum with users, but did not advertise it in either the emails we sent or in any posts about the purge. We admit that this is a mistake on our part and do apologize for it. Unfortunately do to the nature of how purges work, the data in these accounts is not recoverable. In the future we will be sure to provide better information to our users so that you can properly save any accounts that you do not want to be purged.
That said we should have announced or put into the notifications for the re-start of the purge that the date would be Saturday 3/18 not exactly 14 days from the date the emails were sent as many users expected it to be. We based that date on giving users an extra 2 weeks from the date the purge was supposed to initially run on due to the outage we incurred.
The original date for accounts to purge was supposed to be March 4th. But since we went offline on 2/27 and had to roll data back to before the purge initially started we obviously didn't purge accounts on that date. When we were finally up and stable enough to restart the purge, we decided to set accounts so they would purge on 3/18, exactly 2 weeks after the original purge and still 10 full days after notifications were set. This allowed users not only the 9 days we were up before the outage, but an additional 10 days after the additional notification to recover their accounts. We felt that this gave users ample time to recover their accounts and included a full weekend before the purge.
The mistake we made was in communication. We did discuss this in a public forum with users, but did not advertise it in either the emails we sent or in any posts about the purge. We admit that this is a mistake on our part and do apologize for it. Unfortunately do to the nature of how purges work, the data in these accounts is not recoverable. In the future we will be sure to provide better information to our users so that you can properly save any accounts that you do not want to be purged.
The site going down wasn't helpful for anyone and I still believe that you did the best that you could do given the situation. People may be upset over it and I understand that it might have been because of a confusion in communication, but the purge notifications should have gone through. You gave them time. If they didn't do it - that's on them.
In the end - you work so hard for us and I want you to know that we appreciate everything that you do to try and make these things go as streamlined as possible, especially since I know you do it by yourself. I'm sorry to those who lost their accounts in a purge due to the confusion.
Next time we'll all be better prepared for it.
Thank you again for everything that you do, Squeaky. I still recommend keeping the paypal button up so we can donate to you because buying paid time/permanents are our investment and the site needs the funds for upkeep. Thank you for looking into other ways of backing up the site too after the recent outage.
In the future, if you delete an email account without transferring the ownership of the journals from one email to another, is there a way we can open a ticket to get a list of what accounts belong to that deleted email address with some sort of identity verification?
Thank you!
Thank you for IJ Squeaky, and thank you to whomever gifted me with my rename token. <3
Purge
I have a question, however. If we come across a community where the only maintainer was purged, and it hasn't been updated in 7 years, is there any way to request that asylum un? Perhaps through a ticket? Or will it be deleted/purged at sometime in the future? Thanks!
I appreciate all you go for us, squeaky, but there were multiple levels
Thank you.
Since you probably don't hear it enough.