Post count discrepancy? (Like half are missing?)

[Steve Dra 7,574]

Thanks for letting me know I'm not alone in my misery guys!

Maybe my post counter ticks down every time someone downloads one of my paints?  That count would almost be accurate for the past few weeks, LOL

[n4gix 4,947]

I have no idea whether my post count has changed. I quit paying attention to it when I passed 10,000 a few years ago.

[Chase 303]

Steve, did you by any chance change display names over the years?  (Same account, just changing the name?)

We think that may be a cause. I can manually override the post count for the time being, but first curious if I can find a way to correct it at the core. 

[Steve Dra 7,574]

45 minutes ago, Chase Kreznor said:

 

Steve, did you by any chance change display names over the years?  (Same account, just changing the name?)

We think that may be a cause. I can manually override the post count for the time being, but first curious if I can find a way to correct it at the core. 

 

Not that I can recall....of course asking me to recall something I may have done 12 years or so ago when I can't even remember what I had for breakfast....well, you know...HEHE.

 

1 hour ago, n4gix said:

I have no idea whether my post count has changed. I quit paying attention to it when I passed 10,000 a few years ago.

Hey Bill I would normally not pay attention either, but like I said I was planning a 5K paint to coincide with my 5000th post....that idea is totally moot now.  Otherwise I could give a rat's a55!

[n4gix 4,947]

2 minutes ago, Steve Dra said:

Hey Bill I would normally not pay attention either, but like I said I was planning a 5K paint to coincide with my 5000th post....that idea is totally moot now.  Otherwise I could give a rat's a55!

Now that I've slept on it, I seem to recall having at one time surpassed 30,000 posts over the many years I've been here. In fact, I absolutely recall that I was consistently in 2nd place as far as total post counts were tabulated. The only reason for the fellow who beat my total is that he was the kind of jerk who simply posted inconsequential and trivial things just to boost his post count!

[Chase 303]

It's possible (not that either actually happened) that somewhere along the way we either may have

• lost posts or post counts from pre-IPB.  
• had inflated post counts from a previous conversion and it was never caught.

Neither of you had name changes as far as I could tell in logs.  I found a feature to "recount" posts and reputation, but it didn't seem to do anything for either of you except maintain the number you have now.  When I "find all content" I see posts all the way back to 2002.  So it has to be accounting for that.  I did a check of this issue over at Invision Power and haven't found any reports of this yet.

I'll keep playing with possibilities.

[edetroit 933]

I think my post count is off by approx 10000 

[Captain Kevin 586]

16 hours ago, Chase Kreznor said:

Steve, did you by any chance change display names over the years?  (Same account, just changing the name?)

We think that may be a cause. I can manually override the post count for the time being, but first curious if I can find a way to correct it at the core. 

Changed mine once, but it was fairly recent. Like, within the last month recent, so I'm not sure if that theory really works.

[wwdavis 44]

My post count shows 83....I thought I had 35.

 

 

Bill Davis

[Jimm 437]

16 hours ago, n4gix said:

Now that I've slept on it, I seem to recall having at one time surpassed 30,000 posts over the many years I've been here. In fact, I absolutely recall that I was consistently in 2nd place as far as total post counts were tabulated. The only reason for the fellow who beat my total is that he was the kind of jerk who simply posted inconsequential and trivial things just to boost his post count!

Sorry if this sounds cold, but why do post counts really matter?  What is the point of having them when we all know that system is abused on a daily basis.  The way I see it, quality over quantity should be the mantra here.  This is a community of collected knowledge and if members are here for the right reasons, they can glean quite a bit of that knowledge and continue to maintain AVSIM as a valuable resource for the flight simulator community.

When I stated "abuse", it's the a-typical, one word answers out there, that I have witnessed in a lot of threads, such as:

Yeah

Deleted

Hi

[an emoji]

I know I'm no saint when it comes to these types of answers, and I personally try to maintain good responses, but there are quite a few members here who appear to deliberately post one word responses just to get their post counts up.

[Captain Kevin 586]

54 minutes ago, Jimm said:

Sorry if this sounds cold, but why do post counts really matter?

For giggles? I don't know.

[Steve Dra 7,574]

2 hours ago, Jimm said:

Sorry if this sounds cold, but why do post counts really matter?

Hey Jimm,

They only matter to me when I'm trying to coordinate a milestone with a paint I was going to do for the community to celebrate the occasion.

I think I did a repaint at 1000 many years ago, but as irony would have it, that post is likely one of the several thousand that have gone missing.

And for one word posts....never made one but I know it happens...all of my replies either genuinely complementing great posts, posting screens of my repaints, or providing feedback.

The underlying issue Jimm is the fact that data is missing....and though this data is basically trivial, ANY data loss in this day and age is a very ominous sign that there may be other critical pieces of data that are missing/corrupted and going unnoticed...until they are needed. 

Data integrity is a vital part (the most vital in my opinion) of any migration plan, and if data goes missing (regardless of its content), it should be considered a major issue until the reason can be identified and resolved.  

I mean who knows...maybe the agonizing slowness we're experiencing could be related to indexing routines going nuts trying to resolve mismatches in the data tables?   Anyone ever consider that?  Trust me when I tell you that data discrepancies in a data warehouse can cause many more issues than the issue of just the missing data itself.  

[Jimm 437]

7 minutes ago, Steve Dra said:

Hey Jimm,

They only matter to me when I'm trying to coordinate a milestone with a paint I was going to do for the community to celebrate the occasion.

I think I did a repaint at 1000 many years ago, but as irony would have it, that post is likely one of the several thousand that have gone missing.

And for one word posts....never made one but I know it happens...all of my replies either genuinely complementing great posts, posting screens of my repaints, or providing feedback.

The underlying issue Jimm is the fact that data is missing....and though this data is basically trivial, ANY data loss in this day and age is a very ominous sign that there may be other critical pieces of data that are missing/corrupted and going unnoticed...until they are needed. 

Data integrity is a vital part (the most vital in my opinion) of any migration plan, and if data goes missing (regardless of its content), it should be considered a major issue until the reason can be identified and resolved.  

I mean who knows...maybe the agonizing slowness we're experiencing could be related to indexing routines going nuts trying to resolve mismatches in the data tables?   Anyone ever consider that?  Trust me when I tell you that data discrepancies in a data warehouse can cause many more issues than the issue of just the missing data itself.  

Ok, ok not here to argue, I just complimented what Bill posted about the one word posts and how members are trying to pad their post count is all.  If it's important you personally, then great.  I personally never really gave the post count much credibility, since I mentioned "quality over quantity".  I've been known to "heart" a post from people with low post count, just as I would have for someone with a lot, again, the count doesn't matter to me, it's the quality information and good discussions.

[Steve Dra 7,574]

5 minutes ago, Jimm said:

Ok, ok not here to argue, I just complimented what Bill posted about the one word posts and how members are trying to pad their post count is all.  If it's important you personally, then great.  I personally never really gave the post count much credibility, since I mentioned "quality over quantity".  I've been known to "heart" a post from people with low post count, just as I would have for someone with a lot, again, the count doesn't matter to me, it's the quality information and good discussions.

Hey Jimm, not here to argue either....just complete frustration with the situation and I was tying to stress what the real issue is here (Data integrity) ...as we know there will always be those who look at post counts as a serious reputation measurement tool for their own perceived importance. 

And I fully agree with you about "quality over quantity".  In fact I always thought that it would be cool to have a minimum amount of words a post required to qualify as a "post"....even understanding that folks who wanted to subvert that method to bolster their post count could find a way as well.  Maybe that is what the reputation button could do, to give credit to others vs just posting a one word response like "Great, Cool, Awesome" etc when impressed by a post's content.

Either way, it is a systemic problem with any forum system that will not be resolved in this conversation (if ever, as long as there are adolescent-minded folks present).   What is not systemic (nor should ever be) is data loss in a database. It is always event-specific, and this case coincides with a migration event.  It can happen many ways, and the risks associated with some events can never be fully mitigated.  However when its a planned event, any and all measures should be in place, and recovery and RCAs (Root Cause Analysis) should be commenced immediately following the discovery.  

Hoping they can get it all sorted out...I'd like to see everyone's post counts properly displayed because its just the right thing (regardless of its relevance), and like I mentioned maybe all the other issues this website is experiencing may magically vanish when that gets resolved. 

 

 

[n4gix 4,947]

5 hours ago, Jimm said:

Sorry if this sounds cold, but why do post counts really matter?

In the larger scheme of things they don't. I already answered this question in my earlier post.

The major reasons for my relatively high post count are two-fold. Initially I posted a lot in the technical forums for panel, gauge, and aircraft design, sharing discoveries, techniques, and yes, even asking questions of my own. When I took on the duties of a moderator for those technical forums, my posting became even more frequent. When my role as moderator expanded to become "Global" my posting activity climbed ever higher even more rapidly.

I quite deliberately did not name the fellow (who's absence is not truly missed), but yes he was of the sort who posted one word replies simply to boost his count. He most certainly rarely offered anything of substance to our fellow simmers!

But, as has been pointed out quite eloquently, data integrity is the major concern. You would be quite astonished to learn that there are still several thousand posts in the aforementioned technical forums that are still "scrambled" due to a poor recovery process from the previous forum rebuild following the "Great AVISM Hack" of many years ago. Many threads wound up being imported in reverse order, XML scripts and C++ code became either completely trashed, or so scrambled as to defy any attempt at reconstruction. Nonetheless, over the years I have managed to untangle and recover some of the more important threads.

So, what does all of the above have to do with post counts? Just one thing. If the post counts are being auto-generated from saved posts, then it is quite possible that those posts may be missing now, and that sir is a matter of great concern!

Edited March 6, 2017 by n4gix
Finish thought experiment...