FYI: Old accounts cleanup - accidentally deleted members show up as "Guest"

**snowbear** · January 31st, 2011, 02:19 PM

Originally Posted by Dianyla

Oh, fuddddge!!!

This cleanup job was supposed to only delete accounts older than a year, with zero posts, and no verified email address. Unfortunately the "zero posts" criteria did not apply to this and there are at least 3 users who were active members (just with broken email) and their accounts have been deleted.

I am working with those who have contact us to rebuild (cannot restore) their accounts. Please, if any of you are in touch with anyone else whose access is not working (via FB, LJ, etc) encourage them to contact us. We would not ban people this way, despite all the recent paranoia about the Mysterious Ways In Which Mods Work. This was a flat out screw-up on my part and not representative of any moderation action.

See, this is why you shouldn't clean ALL the things.

Oops. Good luck!

Originally Posted by Dianyla

Nope, those won't change normally. The only reason people's uid's changed was because when the Great Board Crash happened a few years ago Stephanie had to basically build a new forum from scratch. She imported people's accounts over from the archive forum and so all of the gaps were taken out of the uid sequence and condensed.

Good to know. I figured with the deletion of the inactive members, the gaps would condense again. Now I know!

**Eboshi** · January 31st, 2011, 02:39 PM

Originally Posted by snowbear

Last time there was a clean-out I went from #4600 to #3028. I'm looking forward to seeing what my number will be now.
...Because I am a dork.

Thanks for your hard work, Dianyla!

How does one find our membership number? This is a new one for me.

**Dianyla** · January 31st, 2011, 02:47 PM

Originally Posted by Eboshi

How does one find our membership number? This is a new one for me.

Go to your own profile, and look at the u=1234 in the URL/address bar. That number is your uid.

**snowbear** · January 31st, 2011, 02:49 PM

Originally Posted by Eboshi

How does one find our membership number? This is a new one for me.

See post #17. You're 1,146.

ETA: My fingers are no match for our amazingly quick admin!

**Eboshi** · January 31st, 2011, 02:52 PM

Thank you snowbear and Dianyla. As Mr. Spock would say, "fascinating."

**getoffmyskittle** · January 31st, 2011, 06:39 PM

Originally Posted by Dianyla

See, this is why you shouldn't clean ALL the things.

Clean... ALL the things?

/pointless "I got the reference!" post

**tigr** · January 31st, 2011, 08:40 PM

Originally Posted by snowbear

If you view your profile, your number is in the URL. You're member 27,801.

Thank you!

**Dianyla** · February 1st, 2011, 01:57 AM

Good news - in working with one affected user today I was able to successfully re-link all of their old posts with their new account. Also, I was able to recover their blog, photo albums, and visitor messages. Some things stay lost (like PMs, and I don't yet know about Articles). This can take a little time so please be patient as I rebuild your account once you have contacted me.

So, I have only heard from 2 people directly so far. If you see someone in this situation and you know how to get ahold of them, please contact them and encourage them to contact us. You can recognize them when you see posts with their name but then it says "Guest" as the account.

If you contact us directly about it, there is nothing we can do. They must contact us. We cannot make contact because their email address was stored in their user account settings, which is now gone. Furthermore, many of the email addresses in question were defunct anyway, which is why they were in the "awaiting verification" group in the first place.

Thanks!