pm messages gone

[minifcvan]

   ???hi all my messages have dissapeared from my message bank can someone help me find them PLESE as iv got adresses on there to send people parts of the fc wagon ive wrecked PLEASE HELP  

[20.4_seconds]

  Mine disappeared yesterday...I thought I had just hit a delete button or something
Richard can prob shed some light on it.. maybe the yabb server does an auto clean up once you hit a certain amount of pm's

Nick

[craiga]

Nick,

In the absence of RET, I would say you are correct. Over the past few years there have already been many times when this has happened. It must mean you've been here for a while

Congrats on earning your 'I lost my messages' stripes :-)


Cheers,

Craig.

[ridgey_didge]

Mine went and I only had 3.  One was only sent in the last 24 hours, although the other 2 were oldies.  It can't have been size that mattered.

David

[craiga]

It can't have been size that mattered.

Keep telling yourself that David  

I'm sure RET will give you an answer to the question, there would be a reason why it happens. I know that the site has certain storage size and bandwidth limitations so maybe RET does it to reduce the amount of storage we use.

Cheers,

Craig.

[ridgey_didge]

That's easy for someone with 1346 posts to say.

David

[craiga]

That's easy for someone with 1346 posts to say.

Just means I'm a bit more bored than you :-)

Last time it happened to me I had over 70 messages stored in my Inbox, plus an equal amount or more in the Outbox that keeps records of what's sent.

Times that sort of thing by 400 or so active users and its a reasonable amount of storage space on the host server. RET tries hard to keep the costs of hosting this site as cheap as possible for the member clubs, but I'm still only guessing as to why your messages went into cyberspace.

Come on RET, forget about the West's Tiger Magpies for a minute and help this man out with his messages!!!

[ridgey_didge]

On checking further its only the inbox I've lost.  Outbox has not been wiped.  Curiouser and curiouser.

David

[Glenn 'Stinky' Stankevicius]

It's happened a few times to me too, I recommend setting your preferences to get copies of the messages emailed to you.

[RET]

I know some of you like to think of me as a capricious cyberspace despot with nothing better to do than trim your mailboxes or delete your comments when the urge strikes.  The truth, however, is far more prosaic.  Let me add that I'm mildly offended by the suggestion that I would be deleting anybody's mail without warning them and explaining why it was necessary.

I have absolutely no idea why your messages have disappeared.  Different users have reported the same thing to me at various times.  It has happened to some forum members with monotonous regularity, and seems to have no relationship with how many messages might be in your Inbox at the time.  Mine currently stands at 580 messages*, and it's never happened to me.  One user reported that it is a frequent occurrence on one computer, but has never happened on another one they use.  There are some users it has happened to a dozen times, and many others who have presumably never experienced it.

I used to think perhaps people were accidentally pressing the "Select All" check-box next to the Delete button on the IM page, but it's happened too many times now to the same people for it to be user error.  I can't immediately see how your Browser or OS version could make any difference to a CGI program like this, but I have to wonder since it seems to happen to some people frequently and never to others.

So I'll reiterate for everyone what my advice has been to all those previous victims:  

[box]In your profile, there is an option entitled Notify by email.  Make sure this is set to "Yes".
[/box]

This means that if someone sends you a PM, it comes to you as an email as well as a PM.  So if your mailbox suddenly disappears, you've got the text of your PMs saved elsewhere.  Most email programs worth having include functions for searching through messages for particular words or phrases.  I've got a folder for my PMs with a thousand or more emails in it, and I can very quickly find all messages from a particular user etc.  Much easier to search than the PM system!

Getting PMs as email has another benefit, too.  Occasionally people succumb to the urge to put in writing exactly what they think of you, and then think better of it and recall the PM.  This of course will not recall the email notification.  You know who you are, and so do I.

Hope all that is some help.

RET

* Once it gets beyond a certain size it's a major hassle to clean out.  Frankly, being bitten by this bug would probably do me a favour...  In the time between composing and previewing this, it's grown to 581.  Probably someone reporting their mailbox has disappeared :-/

[minifcvan]

thanks all,i would NEVER think a fe/fc driver would do this to me maybe someone who drives a ford done it.SERIOUSLY im up set cos i had a few adresses on there and i dont think anyone would take them off .i just wanted to know if there was any way i could get them back. you guys have been very good to me over the last few months and to say someone took then of on purpose seems a bit SOFTCOCKISH............. iwas just wondering what happenened to them thats all                  

[minifcvan]

NOW IM GETTING EMAILS SAYING PEOPLE HAV ANSWERED MY TOPIC BUT THERE NOT ON HERE HMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMM MAYBE ITS THE FBI HMMMM CHEERS MARK

[Glenn 'Stinky' Stankevicius]

Let's all blame Bill Gates!  
Seriously though, I found that if I used the PM system at a particular customer's site, my PMs disappeared almost every time.
At home, I have never had the problem, there is probably some IE option or upgrade that YABB doesn't like. Just go for the email option.

[RET]

I have automated backups that run each Sunday morning, and have gone through them and recovered the following mailboxes:

ridgey_didge: 2
minifcvan: 35
20.4_seconds: 30

Anything that was sent after 3AM Sunday (18/9) is gone forever, though.

cheers
RET

[minifcvan]

thank you very much ret i owe you a six pack cheers mark

[20.4_seconds]

Hey Ret,
Thanks for that...I got all mine back also....for 4 hours...lol  

There all gone again...the 30 old ones and the 7 new ones I had in the last few days.....

I'm gona investgate this a bit further.....very strange...

Nick

[RET]

Nick,

I've put the old ones back again, and recovered another 10 from this morning's backup.  Now try to be more careful this time!

If those who have had this problem want to reply with the exact version of Windows (presumably) and IE (presumably) they're using, that might be helpful.  If anyone using Firefox, Mozilla, Safari, Konqueror or even Netscape has had this problem, that would also be useful to know.

cheers
RET

[Glenn 'Stinky' Stankevicius]

Well I spoke too soon, it has now happened to me at home.

Home -
Windows XP - IE 6.0.2900 blah, blah, blah

Work -
Windows 2000 - IE 6.0.2800 blah, blah, blah
Windows 2000 Server - IE 6.something
Windows 2003 Server - IE 6.something

[RET]

I posed a question about this bug on the YaBB forum.  Would you believe it runs on YaBB?  Extraordinary

Anyway, I have implemented the suggested bug-fix (actually did it about lunch-time yesterday), so if the problem recurs - or has done so since then - please let me know.

cheers
RET

[Glenn 'Stinky' Stankevicius]

So far, so good, for me at least.
Since the "change" I have been using the PM system at home and work with no messages lost