[Palomine]

YES... we're aware of these issues, and I *hope* that pinning this will help some users 'catch up' with what's going on, rather than asking ad infinitum about these and other problems in various threads, private messages (I've replied to a few dozen such PMs since the forum reopened, and I'm just one of several mods) and emails. If you want details, *please* consult the other relevant threads in the Site Issues forum.

As most of you probably know by now, mods are *not* full-fledged system administrators at the BEA Forums... we can *not* fix problems like these... we've relayed your questions/complaints to Matt and Gabe and asked them to provide info/ETAs, but we can't compel them to do so. We have no idea when, or even IF, the tens of thousands of missing images will be restored. Nor can we supply any kind of ETA on when the Search function will be repaired, or when the Chat will be installed... we simply don't know because we haven't been told.

Feel free to continue to ask questions/make comments, etc... but in these matters (and other teething pains related to the switch in forum software) the only guys who can actually provide answers are Matt and Gabe.

[Palomine]

Update July 12, 2009:

See Gabe's pinned thread about the missing images:  http://forum.bearchive.com/index.php/topic,9977994.0.html ...it would seem that the thousands of missing images are unlikely to be returned.

The Search has been fixed, but having used it recently, it would appear that some threads are missing/didn't survive the transition to the new forum. I did some easy searches for relatively recent subjects I KNOW have been posted upon within the past six months and the results turned up empty.

Chat has been up and down on and off lately, with a variety of problems, not the least of which is the fact that usernames aren't preserved, folks have trouble logging into it, etc... This probably accounts for why almost no one is ever in the Chat room.

That is all.

[Palomine]

Update July 29, 2009:

Per Gabe's reply in the pinned 'missing attachments' thread, thousands of image attachments were lost due to human error: a snafu in the way that backups were being made/restored around the time of the hacking (it wasn't the hacking that resulted in the image loss, but the backup procedure itself, which has since been changed to avoid this happening in the future). I asked for (and still await) a bit of further clarification on this weeks ago, but it seems safe to assume that what remains gone will never be restored, no matter how many folks continue to ask/complain/bemoan the fact.

Chat has been up for a few weeks. Sadly, for some not-insignificant portion of users, it's inaccessible and/or useless. Many folks continue to be unable to login to it, getting that all-too-familiar 'invalid' error, and others (including myself) can login, but are disconnected seconds later.

The Search function has been activated and is admirably fast. Unfortunately, it is also deeply flawed: the last several times I tried to use it to find something, it missed threads I was seeking, even when (they were later manually found) all the correct and applicable keywords were used. It's like a fishing net filled with big holes... about 50% effective IMO.

"And that's the way it is." -W.K.

[gonZo]

Also...

An unknown number of users still may be unable to log into the forum. Anyone having that problem should contact [email protected].

An unknown number of users are able to log in, but still can't view attachments and/or post messages. Anyone having that problem can contact [email protected]. Please make sure to include your screen name, so we'll know which account to adjust.

Added September 24, 2009 by Palomine: it took several weeks, but half-a-dozen tries this morning seem to show that the previously-ineffective Search function is now working better for Topic/Subject/Title searches. THANKS to whichever system administrator is responsible for restoring this basic, much-needed functionality to our forums!

Added later: a caveat... if there's a punctuation character attached to the keyword you're searching for (i.e.: a hyphen, or a period or question mark if the word was at the end of a thread title) then the Search function will NOT FIND IT if you only entered the word itself... that seems a bit silly IMO. Thus, if you search for "side" and the word appears as "side?" in the thread title, the Search function WON'T FIND THAT THREAD. Seems like that's something that should be fixed/fixable IMO.

Looks like that may have already been fixed. I just searched for "fake", and the results included threads whose titles contained the string "fake?". However, there's no way to make it search for ONLY the string "fake?".

[Palomine]

Update March 19, 2010:

No changes: Search still has a 75 IQ, Chat still kicks users for noflood and won't admit others on their original main UIDs, etc... Just updating the thread title.



Update January 19, 2010:

The Search function is still only SEMI-repaired... think search engines in the early 1990s. Results you're looking for will eventually come up, but you many have to widen your search criteria so much that it'll feel like you're just sifting through the forum manually.

Chat is still flaky. Most users (who took the time to complain) seem to be able to log in, though some have had to create separate/new UIDs in order to do so. Chat still kicks folks out inexplicably too.

The missing images will stay missing apparently... no need to keep updating on that as it's not going to improve.







Update October 8, 2009:

The Search function is semi-repaired... though far from 100% effective, it's much better than it used to be.

The Chat is still totally borked for some users: many can't log in at all (like Shara, etc...), and once in, others get booted out due to lost connections (like me) or noflood protocol (several other users).

Realistically, the chunk of missing image attachments that were lost due to a backup/restore mistake are unlikely to ever be returned, despite the fact that we're given to understand that SOME COULD be possibly be restored w/effort from sysadmins. I've resigned myself to the idea that it's not going to happen: that the hundreds of man-hours of user -created content that those lost attachments represent (along with the thousands of posts that they were an integral part of) are gone and lost forever. What a terrible waste IMO.

Brand-new users are still, on an almost-daily basis, unable to view ANY attachments due to a bug in the way that new accounts are generated. Sysadmins have declared this error resolved more than once, but it persists, with moderators having to manually 'reset' the new accounts and users having to delete all their BEA cookies.

The password recovery function remains unusable, despite weeks of unanswered complaints about it from Trace and other users.

[Palomine]

Update January 24, 2011:

Based on the recent *specific* suggestion from a user, site admins have made a change to the BEA Chat room parameters that MAY alleviate the intermittent 'noflood' problem that's been impacting some users for ages.

PLEASE LET ME KNOW VIA PRIVATE MESSAGE if you either:

Experience continued 'nofloods' kicking you or others out of the Chat room needlessly, or...
If you experience a reduction or absence of 'nofloods' when you previously suffered with them.

...I'll pass along your feedback to the powers that be and even though it's too early to say whether this problem has actually/finally been fixed, let me say thanks to Mr. Lucky for his suggestion on HOW to fix the problem (rather than just simply describing the problem itself) and to Matt for getting the (hoped for) fix implemented.

Added Jan 27th: apparently the noflood thing is still pounding on Chatters. I'll pass the info along.

Unrelated: the forum "Search" tool in the forum seems as weak as ever... I don't have any expectation that it will ever be 'fixed' in the true sense of the word. GonZo recently suggested that simply not attempting to use the "search in subject name" checkbox helps, even though that means foregoing a useful search modifier... so I'm just passing along the suggestion.

[Palomine]

Despite our admins manually deactivating the 'noflood' feature the other day, 'noflood' STILL lives! The admins have been notified of this, but truth be told this problem may just stick around until some time in the future when we change to a different Chat tool.

Edit June 18, 2011: I'm unpinning this thread since the commonly-reported complaints it covers have been incorporated into another thread here: http://forum.bearchive.com/index.php/topic,9980207.msg10037371.html#msg10037371