Something We All Can Do To Help Prevent The Next Big Downtime

[FoxWolfie]

Do they have a system for deleting older accounts (like some of us have) that if we notify you that we no longer need the account and we want it to be deleted - if that would help the system with 1 less thing. Though that's probably small.

They can't delete accounts, but they could probably add a new account type called "Abandoned". They already have Suspended, Banned, Deceased, Member and Administrator. If they did that, they could set rules for the Abandoned status, just as they have settings for Banned and Administrator. Maybe those settings could block notifications, notes, shouts and watches to abandoned accounts, as well as purging all existing notes and notifications from them. Obviously, this would only be good if the account was truly abandoned, as the purging would not be reversible. The same applies if someone has a permanently banned account, or a deceased status. There is no reason for those accounts to ever waste resources by accepting new notifications or notes. There is no reason for them to accept shouts either. Watching them is questionable, since nothing new would ever show up. People might watch a deceased account just for the memories I guess.

I can think of two ways an account should be marked as abandoned. One is if the user asks an admin to set that status for them, knowing it is not reversible. Maybe a 30-day wait could be required so drama seekers would have a chance to re-decide before it was too late. Another way might be if an account was never accessed for a set period of time. It would have to be at least a year or maybe two years. By not accessed, that means the user has not logged in for at least that length of time, and no modifications were down to the account, no submissions, no signing in to fave stuff, etc. It would take care of the many accounts where someone signed in once, looked around, and decided that FA wasn't for them, so they never returned. It wouldn't surprise me at all if there were 100,000 never-used accounts on here. I believe there are over 950,000 accounts total. Maybe I should contact Yak and see what he thinks about adding an Abandoned status.

 

[Mint Chip]

They can't delete accounts, but they could probably add a new account type called "Abandoned". They already have Suspended, Banned, Deceased, Member and Administrator. If they did that, they could set rules for the Abandoned status, just as they have settings for Banned and Administrator. Maybe those settings could block notifications, notes, shouts and watches to abandoned accounts, as well as purging all existing notes and notifications from them. Obviously, this would only be good if the account was truly abandoned, as the purging would not be reversible. The same applies if someone has a permanently banned account, or a deceased status. There is no reason for those accounts to ever waste resources by accepting new notifications or notes. There is no reason for them to accept shouts either. Watching them is questionable, since nothing new would ever show up. People might watch a deceased account just for the memories I guess.

I can think of two ways an account should be marked as abandoned. One is if the user asks an admin to set that status for them, knowing it is not reversible. Maybe a 30-day wait could be required so drama seekers would have a chance to re-decide before it was too late. Another way might be if an account was never accessed for a set period of time. It would have to be at least a year or maybe two years. By not accessed, that means the user has not logged in for at least that length of time, and no modifications were down to the account, no submissions, no signing in to fave stuff, etc. It would take care of the many accounts where someone signed in once, looked around, and decided that FA wasn't for them, so they never returned. It wouldn't surprise me at all if there were 100,000 never-used accounts on here. I believe there are over 950,000 accounts total. Maybe I should contact Yak and see what he thinks about adding an Abandoned status.

Actually that sounds really great. I would love to see this implemented. I know when FA is back online I will be going to my prior account (I had an old one that I never used) and will unwatch and clean everything out. But after that, the account will be empty. So this solution to getting rid of the tons notifications coming into these accounts that aren't used any more (due to someone wanting a new start or someone simply never returning to FA) would probably help the site a lot. I definitely agree with this idea.

 

[FoxWolfie]

Yeah, you just click the notes you want to get unread, and then click the "restore" button. At least I think so, I can't demonstrate it to confirm just yet for fairly obvious reasons. ^^;

I'll certainly be trying that when the site goes live again. I always figured that the restore button was to restore stuff from trash back to it's original in-box/out-box location, but I honestly never clicked on it to see what it did. It is clustered with the archive and trash buttons, which move messages to other folders.

 

[AliothFox]

FA lives again! Don't everyone crash it at once X3

 

[ForestFright]

Here's an idea on what we can do if we wish to close an account:

1) Change your profile information to inform visitors that the account is closed with pertinent information of what the viewer should do.
2) Trash all notes in the received and sent folders, then go into the trash folder and delete them there.
3) Delete all shouts not on the front page.
4) Unwatch all watched accounts. (this is crucial. It will prevent most notifications from accumulating.)
5) Delete all journals.
6) Delete all favorites.
7) Delete all submissions.
8) Change the password to a weird series of letters, numbers, and symbols.

If you want to leave things up for visitors, you can skip steps 5-7.

you can disable your page, too. this would also prevent anyone from watching the account (unless you want people to still see art/journals/ect)
its under account settings

 

[FoxWolfie]

How many old shouts do we have in our accounts that we can simply trash?

Lots! I bet you have more than 10,000, and you can only check and delete 13 at a time, without affecting the visible ones on your page. That will keep you busy for a while. Then, while you are deleting, you are bound to spot some that will distract you into looking at their page. If you don't care about keeping the most recent 12, then you can take care of your shouts a lot faster using the "check all" button. I don't know if "check all" means all, or just all on the current page.

 

[prinnyex]

site is up but its moving at an incredibly slow pace. who wants to bet how long it'll take before people spamming it crash it back down

 

[AliothFox]

site is up but its moving at an incredibly slow pace. who wants to bet how long it'll take before people spamming it crash it back down

Not spamming. Just an unintentional DDoS attack.

 

[Socks the Fox]

Yay! Now I can go back to ignoring the forums!

 

[FoxWolfie]

Yeah, you just click the notes you want to get unread, and then click the "restore" button. At least I think so, I can't demonstrate it to confirm just yet for fairly obvious reasons. ^^;

I just checked. If I am in trash, the restore button moves stuff from trash to its original folder. If I am in my in-box or my out-box, the restore button is ignored. It does not mark them as unread. I had my hopes up there for a bit.

 

[BakedGewds]

Welp we killed FA again. xD

 

[prinnyex]

Annnnddd its down again -back to pittering around-

 

[Rorick]

And the site's down again.

 

[Duraji]

I just checked. If I am in trash, the restore button moves stuff from trash to its original folder. If I am in my in-box or my out-box, the restore button is ignored. It does not mark them as unread. I had my hopes up there for a bit.

Then I don't know how it's done, sorry! But I thought I did it once before, maybe there's like a "mass action" button or something.

Also, am I the only one having problems with the forums going slow or sometimes making a 404, too? If we lose the forums as well, there's gonna be riots.

 

[prinnyex]

I just checked. If I am in trash, the restore button moves stuff from trash to its original folder. If I am in my in-box or my out-box, the restore button is ignored. It does not mark them as unread. I had my hopes up there for a bit.

maybe you can make use of the priority marking? i use them for my commission notes, marking things depending on how soon i need it (low/medium/high), otherwise i throw it in the archives

 

[suicidalfox]

I'd love nothing more to have the site resume functioning, only to have it get DDoS'd the moment after. No, I'm serious. Let's DDoS the site the moment it comes back up.

Looks like you got your wish!

 

[Zenia]

hehe I just got up from my nap and was like "Oooh FA is up again and I have one new submission and one new journal! Better go look!" Then I clicked... and FA was offline again. lol

 

[Socks the Fox]

Dang, so close... How am I supposed to post a journal advertising my site if FA is down X( *raeg and wrath*

 

[Wandering_Smoke]

I think I killed it lol. I was looking at submissions when FA went online, so I immediately went and nuked everything except submissions. It was only around 6000 total, but still probably too much for FA to handle right now lol. I'm still hoping I'll have time to get through the 7 month backlog of submissions before they disappear.

 

[Socks the Fox]

I bet my auto-refresher every 30 seconds doesn't help at all...

 

[orcaowl]

This reminds me when Katrina knocked out the power for two weeks and randomly in the middle of the second week it came back! And then the power line across the street exploded! And there was a fire and the power was out again lol

Also -- according to FA's twitter "Don't panic. We're not offline again. Just tweaking the database for speed!"

 

[FoxWolfie]

maybe you can make use of the priority marking? i use them for my commission notes, marking things depending on how soon i need it (low/medium/high), otherwise i throw it in the archives

Priority marking works okay, not as good as mark unread, but certainly better than nothing. I probably should use that instead of reminding myself with bookmarks.

 

[Duraji]

I think this is PRECISELY what happened here: http://i.imgur.com/KJnk9.gif

 

[Zenia]

Also -- according to FA's twitter "Don't panic. We're not offline again. Just tweaking the database for speed!"

Gotta add some speed holes.

I think this is PRECISELY what happened here: http://i.imgur.com/KJnk9.gif

OMG Cutest GIF!

 

[Teal]

This is what happens when everyone tries to use the site immediately when it goes back online. -_-