Recovering from Our Loss

We messed up.

Big time.

We lost some tables in our main database, and discovered that our nightly backup was not taking a complete dump of all the tables.

I won't bore you with the details, but the bottom line is we've lost:
  • All votes, ever. -- [update] These have been recreated!
  • All member usernames who registered later than around 12 months ago
  • All member rankings
  • Your member profile info (e.g., bio, favorite sift, etc.), if any
  • All activity that happened on the site March 11
If you feel bad about this, believe it that we feel 100 times worse. We're putting into place measures to ensure that this can never happen again.

For the short term, we're declaring martial sift law across the community and deputized the top 40 sifters of all time to help fix things. The list of deputies is as follows:

zifnab
dystopianfuturetoday
kronosposeidon
arvana
eric3579
blankfist
ant
netrunner
farhad2000
mintbbb
mlx
issykitty
fedquip
dotdude
maatc
firefly
rasch187
deputydog
silvercord
zonbie
theaceofclubz
swampgirl
plastiquemonkey
winkler1
krupo
grimm
dw1117
sarzy
joedirt
therealblankman
oxdottir
sometimes
marinegunrock
youdiejoe
dead_tofu
rickegee
kulpims
fissionchips
alien_concept
michie

All user accounts still exist, but for most of them the username and other account details (email address, star points, etc.) are unknown. However, the account is still associated with your posts (videos, sift talk, comments, etc.). So we've set all unknown usernames to a simple number until we can identify them.

If you are a user whose account has become some unknown number, please re-register with your original username. Then find one of your posts or comments to determine your temporary username number and post it in a comment here to have a deputy or admin fix your account.

We beseech you to stay calm during this crisis and trust that we're doing everything we can to bring the Sift back into a semblance of order.

We're sorry. Darwin bless VideoSift.

[edit]
For the time being, queued videos will not be expired to your pqueue by siftbot since they are a couple days old now and have zero votes.

[edit]
A good way to start repopulating things you know you voted on would be to go through all the videos you've added to your own playlists. Also check out the new "oldest medals" listing on the Top Sifts tab for a listing of just videos that have earned "top 15" medals.

We are automatically casting votes for every user on every video they've submitted so you don't have to do all those yourself.

[edit]
NOTE: You will not have to start sifting from scratch. After your username is fixed, all your old videos and star points will be applied to you as before.
JAPR says...

I think a good start for recovering could be rushing through people's profiles/channels and upvoting videos you know you upvoted in the past.

Fjnbk says...

Just my luck that this would happen when I had 249 star points...

Oh well, I hope that we can recover fast from this. At least the videos are still there; that's the most important thing.

unknown user says...

OK, I've re-registered and I've found my temporary replacement number - Now what???

-yes, posted my number, but do I just wait now, do I log out and wait?

????

kulpims says...

sift's own 9/11... I call it a conspiracy. saw a guy today in the chatroom wearing choggie's nick... other usual suspects were also there... won't name any names now, since - well, you don't have any no more.
just tried fixing some usernames i know but got some error message.. like, they have to re-register first. what else can we do, dag, lucky? be our Rudy Giuliani. or rather - don't be

Deano says...

This would have to happen to my favourite website

Christ I'm done to 109 stars from 152 ,wtf! Waaaaaha, waaaaaahhhhhhh!!!

*WTF.

Look I know people are going to rag on you for not having a backup in place but as you say you're going to feel more gutted than anyone else.

Incredibly disappointing all round but chin up, we'll get through this.

Laekroth says...

Oh man, that really sucks but I know you will figure out a way to tackle this slight bump in the road... At least I've enjoyed my 100 star rank for 4 days

Good luck in fixing it
/passes out the cookies and coffee...

brain says...

I'm curious, has every possible option been exhausted for recovering the data?

Were the tables accidentally dropped? If so, it's possible that through extremely hard work, it could be recovered from the disk. But of course that becomes increasingly unlikely as time goes on and parts of the disk are overwritten.

Or was the database split across hard drives and a hard drive died? In that case, you could try to get the data recovered from a service.

If it's private that's fine. I'm just curious if every option has been exhausted and we're stuck with this.

Thanks, and good luck!

dw1117 says...

Cling to your guns people. It's martial law time. Chaos everywhere. Grab a bottle of booze and start clicking like crazy. There's some votes to be voted on.

Deano says...

I think I will have a few dozen drinks. Last night looked so good, got some key work done, then I wake to this nightmare.

So Choggie and the others have risen from the grave? <shudder>

jatoha says...

I've lurked here forever. I'm so sorry to hear this, so I registered just so I can up vote things back into place, not that I can do much as a new user....

[defunct] Raigen says...

Oh. My. Science.

I had to recreate my account, it's all gone, and full of stars, and missing stars, and a bunch of other horrible cliches too.

I have to go and follow Mink's advice this one time and get my bottle of Smirnoff.

arvana says...

Wow, this is wild -- MAJOR CATHARSIS on Videosift! Apparently a huge shakeup was needed around here; it will be fun to see how the pieces all land.

On the one hand, it's a tragic loss of information; on the other hand, it's an opportunity for a new paradigm to emerge.  Strawberry Fields Ukulele may be dethroned!

mauz15 says...

@ arvana: ^ Agreed

It could have been worse. At least the sifted videos are in order, accounts survived (right?), the ukulele video no longer has 500 votes, etc.

Stats are meaningless. Stars are just a marker. The community still remains, the debates and discusions are still here, the videos are still here' and it's not like things are irreversible. Lucky and the staff are working on it.

I'll do my part and concentrate more on upvoting/downvoting things than on posting new videos.

Hex says...

Ouuuch, as a Network Admin I feel your pain. Go to the pub when most is fixed, have to destress yourselves after this.

Guess its time to work for that gold star again

dbalsdon says...

Any chance downvoting could be disabled/limited for a while? With every video at 0 votes, will getting -3 votes still cause videos to be discarded or declared dead?

laura says...

at first I couldn't log in...asked to reset my password and it sent me two consecutive emails w/ different random passwords, and a password reminder which I never entered: "bing bang". Got in, though...sorry about what happened, man. Seems right in line with what's happening in the rest of my life at the moment, though...so I wasn't exactly shocked. I'll try to help as much as I can.

cheesemoo says...

I'd be upvoting stuff on my playlists now, but can't because most people have been reset to probie status, and probies can't vote on probies' videos...

It seems like the google cache still knows who voted which way on each video. Is there a way to mine that information and plug it back into your database? Probably not something you can do quickly.

eg. this shows the upvotes and downvotes for http://election08.videosift.com/video/Homer-Simpson-tries-to-vote-for-Obama

Unfortunately, it looks like the google cache only keeps the latest version they have seen. Once they revisit the pages on videosift, that information will be lost, I think.

www.archive.org might have cached versions of most older sifts, but their saved pages look weird.

gwiz665 says...

I'm so glad no one thought of me when deputizing "key members".. now I really feel like a valued member of the community.
[edit: QQ, I've since seen that it's just the top 40 users, so I have only myself to blame. ]

Short of a complete wipe this is probably pretty much the worst that could happen. It's over, man. Game over!

gwiz665 says...

Use google cache to get your profile stuff asap while it's still there

webarchive/waybackmachine might help in recovering lost information.

Votes are completely lost? As long as we still have the comments, it'll work, but aw fuck man, that's two years of procrastination down the fucking toilet. Fuck this sucks.

paul4dirt says...

i think every active member who registered before this data and got affected should get a special siftpocalypse-surivor medal in their profile.

ill go on a major upvote run later today. good luck all, especially lucky and dag. i'm sure videosift will recover.

Shepppard says...

Guess i'll go around voting peoples sifted videos up, get them their stars back.

Edit: Looks like I can't help as much as I though, Probationairies cant vote for other probationairies, so those of you who are lucky enough to not have a P beside their name, please just send a vote to

http://www.videosift.com/video/Most-In-5-Seconds-videos-in-5-and-a-half-minutes

That was my highest rated video before, and I just need another 9 to start helping others recover.

joedirt says...

Are you sure there are no backups??? Even older ones? You can probably grab recent videos and merge them.

Anyways, everyone can go to google cached pages for a day or two and grab name to number (like from your profile page).

lucky760 says...

>> ^dystopianfuturetoday:
Never Forget 3/12


Actually, more fittingly, this all happened at about 11:30pm on 3/11.

And everyone's incorrect P has been fixed as has everyone's star point total (based on sifted vids; those for applauded comments are gone).

[edit]
Actually applauded comment stars are still there.

Right now just dead pool fix stars are gone, but we should be able to rebuild that data (after this initial onslaught is over) by scanning siftbot's comments (like "so-and-so has been awarded a star for fixing this dead video"). The same goes for old-style quality ST posts.

blankfist says...

I feel somehow this is like that alien incident at the end of Watchmen.

Well, we can most certainly pull through this. Once more people start registering again, I'll start putting numbers to names. We can clean this up, and we'll have a better Sift! A new improved Sift! And siftbot will be our sex slave!

grinter says...

Thanks burdturgler for the Google cache tip: Got my avatar back!

Now, to start on my 1049 upvotes (as of March 8th)!!!
...and I guess I'll never get my deadpool fix stars back. Oh well. I guess I'll have to earn my silver star back the old fashioned way.

residue says...

Damn, sorry to see such a catastrophe to such a well-managed site. We'll recover. thanks for the hard work.

(oh by the way, by votes received seems to be wrong, I believe it was ~999999999999999999999999999999999999992999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999 before the crash)

gwiz665 says...

I have so little spine it's unbelievable. I was gone for 5 minutes, played some sad guitar and now I'm back.. GIVE MY LIFE MEANING VIDEOSIFT!!

*quality recovery work in light of such a force majure.

[defunct] shuac says...

From my new profile bio:

It took far too long to build up 100 sifts as 'shuac' and I don't have the wherewithal to start over. So this time around, I'm strictly a watcher. Enjoy that donation, though!

Edit: a quick thought...you know how businesses with a shaky model takes out insurance on their building? And then suddenly a week later, the building burns to the ground? You know?

ant says...

Computers and electronics suck!! See, always backups and make sure they work. No one is perfect. Even MS, Symantec, Google, eBay, etc. have problems. Sh*t happen.

lucky760 says...

Actually, you don't have to start over. You still have all your published videos. (And you'll soon have all your old quality ST post and deadpool fix stars.)

And yes, thanks ant, for mashing that bucket of chunky sea salt in our gaping wounds.

dag says...

Comment hidden because you are ignoring dag. (show it anyway)

It's black Friday for me. (Friday the 13th). All I can say is thank you for your patience and helping us pull ourselves out of the rubble. VideoSift will rebuild and we will be stronger than before.

It's always been about the good people here - and as long as that hasn't changed we'll be OK in the end.

jmd says...

Wow this is indeed a big mess. I was scratching my head when I opened an email from siftbot saying It hadnt seen me in a while. I know sometimes when I reinstall windows that I dont allways fill in the auto logon info...but I clicked on video sift and there it was, then I clicked on the link on the front page.

Wow..all votes..gone. I can't believe such a thing was unrecoverable.

swampgirl says...

How's that autovote working, Dag.. I was just voting up my old stuff... the votes were at "0", but would not let me vote.. "cannot vote the same video twice"... hmm.. grr.


I'm going to upvote my channel for a while then. HEY FOLKS!.. head over to the Vintage channel for a voting spree!

rasch187 says...

Well this was an interesting experiment. Let's never do it again.

Thanks for all your hard work fixing this, lucky. I can imagine you being a bit sleep deprived at the moment.

ant says...

>> ^residue:
Damn, sorry to see such a catastrophe to such a well-managed site. We'll recover. thanks for the hard work.
(oh by the way, by votes received seems to be wrong, I believe it was ~999999999999999999999999999999999999992999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999 before the crash)


Me too!!!

notarobot says...

My star-point count is not what I remember it to be. I seem to be +3, giving me gold-star status. Not complaining. Just thought it would be dishonest not to say something.

Also, I just wanted to say thanks to, Dag, Lucky, and everyone else who's working so hard to get this mess sorted out. I'd offer to help, but my scripting ability is basically limited to bold, italics, and video-embedding. If that will help, let me know. Otherwise, I hope the most difficult work is behind you.

Zifnab says...

Would it be possible to at least give sifted videos 9 extra votes to bring them up to 10 (1 vote from the submitter + 9 more)? Have the votes be from some generic temporary accounts or something. There are a large number of older obscure videos that got sifted but didn't get too many votes that will end up always having 1 or 2 votes otherwise...

kulpims says...

this is a great opportunity to start a new system of voting where you don't need a set limit, put everything in one big sift and squeeze out the leftovers by using downvotes more often

Fjnbk says...

Interesting, if you click on the Channels button, the vote totals are still preserved, so those numbers weren't lost. Comment votes also survived, oddly enough.

marinara says...

i want things to get back to normal asap so we can keep the new stuff flowing. Thanks videosift, lucky and dag. Thanks for the confession and I speak for us all as we await more new stuff!

mintbbb says...

I haven't read through any of the posts.. So pardon me if this is something you have just read.. or if this is just totally whiny and selfish..

I am sure everybody is shocked and surprised and feeling frustrated.. I can't imagine how hard this is to dag and Lucky.. I am so happy to see all the sifted videos are there, and the star points!

But right now I think I just might have to take a break from here though.. I made it to the Top 10 REAL fast.. I mean, I made my account last April, and started trying to post in May. After I got my first sifted video, I was on a roll! Yes, I get addicted and obsessed and obviously VS became an addiction!

Just last week I was thrilled to have received 23 000 votes! There I was, on top10, thinking MAYBE one day I'd pass even one of the top 9 active shifters. And I know I had about 815 star points - for some reason it went down to 800 after the crash. But I wanted to climb up that list.. I wanted to be the second 'queen' to get a crown after Issy!

Right now I am torn.. should I just give up.. I still have my star points, but I will never get the votes back. I am not even one of the popular/old timer/fun sifters who'd have lots of people go through their sifts and upvote everything.. All I managed to do today, selfish me, was to upvote all my owm videos, to learn that it was then done automatically and I just wasted an afternoon..

Yes, I admit, I love being competitive, and popular and #1.. I don't want to go through another long battle to get back to the top10. I know everybody feels the same way.. it is a long run to get the votes back..

But why do I want to be in thew Top10? Because I love this place.. and I am afraid that if I am not in the top, nobody will pay any attention to me. And if nobody pays any attention to me, I won't get anything sifted. And I am better being #1 online than in RL..

OH btw, this pots should have those <drunk> </drunk> tags (I have tomorrow off..)

Just saying.. Yes, I am whining, add me to the whiny poster list! Mostly I am saying.. I am not sure if I am strong enough to stay and fight my way through to the top again. I do love this place! I hope everybody else is stronger than me, keep on sifting, posting and upvoting.

I will probably be back tomorrow, trying to figure a way to get every single video I post sifted! I made my way up once, I can do it again! We all are starting from scratch! I am sooooo happy that all the sifted videos are there too!!!!

Thank you all, VS people! Keep sifting and voting and hopefully we all feel better tomorrow!

burdturgler says...

Mint! Don't worry! Believe me everyone who comes to the sift recognizes you and your posts whether you are in some silly side panel or not! Hell, you were 'deputized' with crown privileges! You contribute a tremendous amount to this site and it's not just with videos. You will always be in the TOP 10 to me!

I had like 5600 votes and I'm feeling your pain because I was hoping to grind my way through and reach the stars like you. But honestly, it doesn't matter. Everyone still recognizes me for who I am (idiot) even if I had a P next to my name.

Don't worry about being selfish. I upvoted my sifts first too. Then lucky busted out a script to do it automatically. lol!

But then I started tackling others vids .. first the bookmarked ones I had .. then I went and did a search for everything I promoted .. etc etc now I am going through queues one at a time and I'm finding lots of great stuff I've never seen before.

I'm using the drunk tags too right now so I'll shut up but I'll leave you with this fight club style advice .. "you are not your votes" .. and trust me no one here thinks you are either.

Doc_M says...

A couple quick tips:

"Google cache" search your profile. Piece of cake.

Dive into your playlists and upvote everything. Why not? You plainly like them enough to list them.

Relax, have a smoke, and look at some pictures of kittens... before you upend your desk or crush your crystal mouse collection.

mintbbb says...

>> ^burdturgler:
Mint! Don't worry! Believe me everyone who comes to the sift recognizes you and your posts whether you are in some silly side panel or not! Hell, you were 'deputized' with crown privileges! You contribute a tremendous amount to this site and it's not just with videos. You will always be in the TOP 10 to me!
I had like 5600 votes and I'm feeling your pain because I was hoping to grind my way through and reach the stars like you. But honestly, it doesn't matter. Everyone still recognizes me for who I am (idiot) even if I had a P next to my name.
Don't worry about being selfish. I upvoted my sifts first too. Then lucky busted out a script to do it automatically. lol!
But then I started tackling others vids .. first the bookmarked ones I had .. then I went and did a search for everything I promoted .. etc etc now I am going through queues one at a time and I'm finding lots of great stuff I've never seen before.
I'm using the drunk tags too right now so I'll shut up but I'll leave you with this fight club style advice .. "you are not your votes" .. and trust me no one here thinks you are either.


Awww, burg.. turg.. I wuw ya! .. Still <drunk> I mean, I am NOT here, I am supposed to go the sleep.. turn of the comp.. go to sleep.. don't check on the sift.. ... .. oh too late!

ReverendTed says...

Weird. We had a database corruption at the office last week and lost a full day of activity. It turned out to be a much smaller catastrophe than I had feared, mainly due to everyone pulling together and doing their part to reconstruct what was lost.
Probably time for a franchise reboot anyway, right?

ObsidianStorm says...

Hey - everything is gonna be all right. It's been said before, but I'll bet it bears saying again - this place is, ultimately, about the people - and it's a great place.

Why should it change?

lucky760 says...

Keep in mind that rank is based on votes.

Since there have been so few votes cast thus far (less than a day's worth) rank is going to continue to be very volatile for a while. Give it some time to settle.

drattus says...

Small quirk in the scheme of things but I just noticed that although the last video I sifted, http://www.videosift.com/video/Watch-This-Before-Filing-A-False-DMCA shows up on my "Highest Rated Videos" list it doesn't show up on my sifted videos list itself. I haven't added up votes or anything but I'd guess they are ok, it just isn't showing up on my sifted list as far as I can tell.

I'd guess if it happened to that one it might have to others recent vids as well so when you've got the rest sorted out you might look into it if you get a chance.

Hex says...

One idea, give members one promote power for each video they have posted and they are limited to one promote per week. That way good videos that had alot of votes can be pushed up to get the exposure they deserve

EDD says...

Here's one way you can help restore balance to the sift if you're not planning on going through all the sifted vids: http://www.videosift.com/playlists/EDD/Sifts-to-promote - it's a playlist of mine to which I've been adding many past #1 and top15 videos over the past couple of hours and apart from that mostly a good source of laughs and upvotes. If you've got a power point to burn, go ahead, pick one and "just do it"

Btw me, I'm now up to ~1500 (I think it's almost 1/4th of the votes I had amassed). Hey, this ain't that bad

Duckman33 says...

Question: What do we do about getting our charter status back? Currently, I can only sift 3 vids.

[Edit] Thanks lucky! No problem on the delay, I know you guys are busy. I was mostly wondering if there was a process like recovering our accounts/usernames for getting our charter back. Thanks again!

EDD says...

I just lost 8 star points (133 -> 125). No worries, I just wanted to clear up whether they were deducted from the 8 videos in my PQ for which they might have been erroneously assigned, or is that number just a coincidence and something else was the reason?

Kevlar says...

Holy crap! I leave on a mini-vacation for three days, and the site blows up. It seems my 'slowest sifter to attain new stars ever' plan is finally paying for itself.

Seriously, though, nice work on getting the ship back together.

lucky760 says...

>> ^Duckman33:
Question: What do we do about getting our charter status back? Currently, I can only sift 3 vids.

Sorry for the delay. You're chartered again.

>> ^EDD:
I just lost 8 star points (133 -> 125). No worries, I just wanted to clear up whether they were deducted from the 8 videos in my PQ for which they might have been erroneously assigned, or is that number just a coincidence and something else was the reason?

When we recalculated everyone's stars after the crash of 3/11, we did it incorrectly (all applauded comments were counted as stars even if they were for Power Points instead of stars). I just corrected that mistake.

jonny says...

>> ^lucky760:
When we recalculated everyone's stars after the crash of 3/11, we did it incorrectly (all applauded comments were counted as stars even if they were for Power Points instead of stars). I just corrected that mistake.


There must be something else screwy - I went from 304(before crash)->303(after crash)->299(this morning). I only had 2 or maybe 3 comments applauded that resulted in a star point, and have a total of 9 applauded comments, so that doesn't add up. Also, there are some comments that I know had been applauded (15+ votes), but currently show fewer votes - is that due to missing users? This comment in particular had just hit 15 votes on tuesday. (Weirdly, even sifty's comment telling me it earned me a power point disappeared, though the email proves otherwise.)

More importantly, I seem to be missing some videos. My profile page correctly reports that I have 248 sifted videos, but if I go through my sifted listing pages, there are only 242. I doubt there is any chance I can look through and figure out which ones are missing. Any ideas how to fix that or find them?

lucky760 says...

To quote this ST post: We've lost all activity that happened on the site March 11

As far as other star discrepancies in general, some might have been earned on 3/11 which is why they're gone, or they had to do with my applauded comment fix, or they had to do with possible bad stats-keeping that was fixed from old deadpool fixes.

As far as missing videos go, the most obvious guess would be that they are being filtered, e.g., by channel or NSFW or LONG, etc.

jonny says...

Turning off all filters did bring 5 of the missing 6 back. I didn't realize they were in effect on my own videos. But there is still one missing - weird. There was that one video you yanked because of a copyright claim from harvard a long while back, but I'm pretty sure the vid and star count was updated immediately then (that's why I was so confused at the time).

The star point discrepancy is definitely not due to dead pool fixes. I remember I stopped fixing deads (when they still gave star points) when I had exactly 46. I was approaching diamond status and didn't want 50+ star points from dead fixes. 248 vids + 7 quality talk posts + 46 dead fixes + 3 applauded comments = 304. I'm only mentioning this in case there are some further gremlins lurking in the db that you'll want to find.

Also in that vein, I noticed that the dead fix count reported on the profile page has changed. Prior to the crash, it reported (about?) 78, and now says 65. Perhaps that's related? Again, I don't really care about the number personally (there's a few hundred not reported from when only the ones that granted star points were counted), just trying to ferret out any possible db corruptions.

jonny says...

oh - about that applauded comment. It picked up its 15th vote on tuesday (3/10), and after the crash went to 12. I was just wondering if that was because lost usernames got wiped from comment votes. I was worried it could do some weird things if people re-upvote comments.

Krupo says...

Oh wait, so this post claims to have 168 comments but in fact has... significantly less... so how much of the fixing is thanks to the kick-ass deputies and how much is it thanks to additional table recovery work? You guys have done a pretty good fixing job so far...

blahpook says...

So just to let you know that I downvoted that plucker Jake S. - but my pre-3/11 vote upvoted him. So don't ban me.

Thanks for all the hard work everyone!

lucky760 says...

>> ^Krupo:
Oh wait, so this post claims to have 168 comments but in fact has... significantly less... so how much of the fixing is thanks to the kick-ass deputies and how much is it thanks to additional table recovery work? You guys have done a pretty good fixing job so far...


See ^up there:
"Comment listing has been shortened because loading it is taking too long. The newest comments are below. If you want to load the whole slow listing, click here."

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