Where did all my posts go?
So I went to go sign in today and it gave me either 1 of 2 errors(see below). I dumped my cookies and tried a different browser and PC and still the same. Waited about 20mins and now I can login norm...
Forum Discussion
@WiderMouthOpen, it should still be possible to restore all your posts. The functionality built into this website probably wouldn't delete them. It most likely just marks them as "deleted" and they're retained. If that's the case, permanently deleting your posts would have required someone with permission to add, change,or delete data in tables to access the database directly.
I agree about the red flags. Deleting all of a user's posts is an activity that should have been logged for review. But, this non-monetary application might not include that level of control. Apparently, deleting all of a user's posts, without removing the forum user's ID, isn't something that's normally done.
Admins able to mark posts as "deleted" would probably be able to "undelete" them too. Hopefully, Becky or TiffanyR will discover how to do that for all of your removed posts soon.
@Becky, if there's no forums admin function to restore selected user posts that were removed, it might be possible to do it on the backend. Do you have contact with a forums DBA for whom you could ask to verify if deleted posts are actually deleted or just marked as deleted and retained in the table? If the latter is true, Cox should consider having the DBA run an update query to reset the "deleted" settings on his posts back to active. I realize that's not a generally accepted practice and could undelete posts WiderMouthOpen deleted, too. But deleting all of a user's posts without cause is not a generally accepted practice either. If the table contains a "Deleted_Date" field, the update query could be limited to just his posts deleted the day they were all removed. It it's not available, the restore would be more complicated. If a "Deleted_By" field is available, it would be useful in your investigation to determine what happened.
Thank you for your detailed input. What worries me is even if it is technically possible to retrieve posts marked for deletion, the work required on the backend to do so will be avoided. Also, even if the posts get retrieved, I don't think we will get a honest answer of what happened. Too much inside policy.
I don't think your posts are marked for deletion but perhaps review. You still have the points so something is being summed on the back end.
I wish I had an exact "from my experience" timeline for you but when I was being reviewed, audited, assessed...I didn't look for all my previous posts.
I got red-circle notifications for each of the specific flagged posts. Of course, I reviewed the posts with my flagged comments, but my posts were removed. The server asks you to submit an appeal but I didn't know what I had written in said posts. I searched cached servers and I didn't see anything worth flagging. Maybe.
Inside policy would be good but I think this delay is more about priority. Reviewing flagged accounts just isn't a priority at Cox. Your "questionable" posts are offline so what would be the urgency.
I wonder if Cox has a program to find violations or is it just a warm body looking?
If my input is credible, I've never read anything questionable or in violation of Cox policy. If somebody is being rude, you tell them to stop.
You still have the points so something is being summed on the back end.
This website uses a running total to track the number of notifications (number inside red circle), rather than sum the number of new posts you haven't read. That can get out of sync occasionally and it's the reason we sometimes see the red circle when there aren't actually any new notifications. I've had to contact Cox and have them reset that a couple of times. If it does that, it's probably not going to recalculate points.
If you delete one of your own posts, I don't think it's actually deleted then. It's probably marked as "deleted" and is still in the table, but is no longer available to view. Those "deleted" posts are probably actually deleted after a specified amount of time. This allows a deleted post to be recovered (theoretically) and it's more efficient to delete a lot of posts at the same time than it is to delete each post individually. I don't know this is how the website functions for certain though. That's why I asked Becky to contact the DBA and ask.
It's probably marked as "deleted" and is still in the table, but is no longer available
Another thing that concerns me is if I delete a post(IE it is off topic) will that confuse the moderator working on the issue? I don't want them saying that's the reason ALL the posts are gone.
