Thread: Missing pictures.

Originally Posted by Sturdee

in my humble opinion it was a case of programming incompetence by the backroom gurus.

Peter.

Really? Perhaps you could pop down there and show them how to do it properly.
I'd like to sincerely thank the 'back room gurus' for all the time and effort they put into these forums. It is, apparently, a thankless and unappreciated task to maintain these forums and make them available, free of charge, to everyone.
Still a magnificent resource. Thanks Neil and support team.

Those that contributed financially to the operation of the forums can complain there rest of us are just there for a free ride.

Think about all that useful info you got for free - OK for the advertising exposure.

I still have all my photos cataloged, backed up and readily accessible.

If anyone really wants the photos for one of my posts I am happy to provide them for a small fee ;-)

Originally Posted by BobL

Those that contributed financially to the operation of the forums can complain there rest of us are just there for a free ride.

Think about all that useful info you got for free - OK for the advertising exposure.

I still have all my photos cataloged, backed up and readily accessible.

If anyone really wants the photos for one of my posts I am happy to provide them for a small fee ;-)

Hi,
I appreciate these forums but I have to disagree that the members are along for a free ride, where does all that free info come from? It is donated by members. Have you your self Bob thought how much the time, expertise and effort you your sell have contributed would be worth in $ terms. Members come from all disciplines and contribute their expertise, some would charge mega $ if you consulted them at their place of work. I think it is a reasonable shared effort from all who contribute and even some of the lurkers will chip in when they realize they have the bit of info some one needs.
Regards

Originally Posted by A Duke

Hi,
I appreciate these forums but I have to disagree that the members are along for a free ride, where does all that free info come from? It is donated by members. Have you your self Bob thought how much the time, expertise and effort you your sell have contributed would be worth in $ terms.

Hmm . . . . I'm perhaps a touch more cynical about most posts on forums.
After sex, I believe a man's jollies comes from telling another bloke how to do whatever he's doing.
"He" can be the "man", or the "other bloke".
I guess when its done at no charge, that is a kind of donation, although some call it politics, or religion, or . . . . . .maybe just being a smart ?

Most of what I know comes from taxpayer funded training, travel, research opportunities etc so when its not the above, I think of my posts as a kind of community payback.
That's why I don't charge men's sheds or wood work clubs/organizations etc for any advice.

I guess the question should be asked whether or not there is a backup of the forums in the backroom vaults somewhere that predates the image vapourisation.

If there is, would it be possible to recover the images and restitch them to the current forum? Never having looked into the vBulletin software, I assume it would not be a simple task, but if the backup exists the possibility must be there.......

Anyone up for a bit of forensic programming? Is vBulletin open source software?

Backup would probably be the only avenue. Restitching no; the few of mine I checked didn't even have placeholders for the AWOLs.

I'm pretty sure VBulletin isn't open source. There's a VBulletin forum about VBulletin itself, but I haven't visited it in years.

Joe

Originally Posted by joe greiner

There's a VBulletin forum about VBulletin itself, but I haven't visited it in years.

Maybe VBulletin should use another forum type for their own forum - lest their pics go MIA.......

I just spot checked my albums and they seem to be ok. The last thread I put up with loads of pics seems to be ok too. I was one of the people affected the last time this happened which IIRC was Jan 2013, and I had stacks of pics go missing then.

Yeah it seems like this is a pretty huge problem, I've been encountering way more missing pictures while doing research on some machines lately.

Surely there is a backup they can roll back to for the old posts?

Every pic I have attached since before 2009 is gone & there are only 2 photos from 2009 left as well.

Just want you to know I share your pain IT backroom guys and Neil.

If you can get the pictures back from backups or whatever then great.

If not, well I've enjoyed this forum for 13 years and am not going to let this bother me.

Sure, there was a lot of effort involved in taking and uploading some of those photos but I felt I was fully compensated for it at the time just by being able to learn and discuss - otherwise I wouldn't have kept on doing it.

Cheers
Arron

Been on this problem for a few days now and it looks like what is missing will stay missing.

I've nailed down the problem. It was to do with vBSEO which changed link addresses for attachments. We found out about this just after vBSEO it was deleted. Steven and I spent many days trying to sort that one out, I actually went through and manually restored somewhere around 50 odd attachments for a couple of threads and gave OP's the option of restoring their missing attachments themselves as it would have taken years for one person working 24 hrs a day to do. I don't recall anyone taking me up on that offer back then.

Explanation of problem:

• vBSEO was deleted around 2013 because it was no longer supported, worked poorly and had vulnerabilities that could have caused major security problems.
• When it was taken off a lot of images disappeared.
• There were still links to them but they went nowhere.
• The upgrade to vB4.2.3 (latest version of vBulletin) had a bug in it and caused the loss of all unused images ie anything that wasn't in a post or an album was deleted.
• Because of the vBSEO link change, all of those attachments were seen by the program as not in use. Hence the deletions.
• This was an automatic thing done by vB and that is why most of the threads have no empty attachment box or link to show what was there or even if there was ever an attachment at all.

Any post that still has a link to a graphic, .pdf or similar may still be able to be restored if the poster has it in their album.

All threads, posts that have no empty box or link will not be able to be restored as there is nothing to restore.

This is a bad situation and has destroyed many threads as well as upset members who spent countless hours working on these threads to make them great with their photos, plans etc. It is regrettable that this has happened but there is nothing that we can do about it other than move on.

It's no consolation but there are many vBulletin Forums that have had the same problem and none to my knowledge have been able to recover.

We are currently for cached versions of old posts and some still have pics in them these may be able to be copied saved then uploaded to old threads. But would need to be done by the original poster.

If there is any more on this I will post it here.

Cheers - Neil

PS This is what happens when you try to keep everything up to date with current versions, etc. I sometimes wonder why we bother. No I don't, its to make sure the bad guys can't get in and bugger the forums up for everyone. You don't expect the sabotage to come from within the supposedly bug free and safe program you are installing from those who recommended it to fix other vulnerabilities in their programming.

Originally Posted by ubeaut

...gave OP's the option of restoring their missing attachments themselves .... I don't recall anyone taking me up on that offer back then.

In my case I didn't take up the offer because in some of the more important cases it was very difficult to know which was the pic to put in (mainly in the Saw Files 101 thread - which also had many pics in it from other posters).

However, in retrospect even if I had it seems it would have been time wasted as they would have again been deleted in the recent purge, as near as I can tell.

So the question is, if the effort to put them back now is undertaken by the OPs, what guarantee is there that it can't happen again? I would be prepared to spend some time restoring at least some of the important threads as long as I knew they were would be safe from vBulletin running riot again.

It seems a shame that the vast amount of info on the forum would be wasted by not having the pics available, as they tell much of the story - sometimes all the story.

I can related to a lot of what you guys are feeling. I have looked at one of my old threads as an example to see if photos were missing which they are. The next thing that I needed to do was locate the photos and these are not available. I think I might have deleted the original photos. Not much I can do about that thread.