Post count discrepancy? (Like half are missing?)

[Steve Dra 7,588]

6 minutes ago, n4gix said:

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.

Ahh the HACK....yes Bill, much more than the forums got hosed (as you well know).  Here is one of the ways it affected me as a painter and a then-prolific uploader to the library (after the hack I lost a ton of motivation to share my work, at least here at Avsim)

Being asked to re-upload this many files, with all that is involved with uploading just one file, I just did not have the motivation to recreate all that work without confidence that I'd be repeating the process in the future. (my uploads always include many preview pics so potential downloaders can see the paint they are taking the time and bandwidth to download).  I did re-upload a few of the more popular ones such as my LevelD AA repaint which has over 17,000 downloads, but others I just sent to other sites, while others had already been scalped (my term for seeing my repaints on other sites I know I didn't upload to, hehe).

So in regards to data integrity, post counts may not mean much in the grand scheme of things, but download counts sure do!  Advertisers pay based on them (and other factors), and I can promise you if they are not accurate they would have some real issues paying.  So you can see how something as innocuous as a post count can be an indicator of a much larger underlying issue that could ultimately effect...say it with me....REVENUE!  

I actually have a very similar situation that we experienced at my workplace that would have costed the company millions if it was not discovered in thorough regression, integration and functional testing (what I do for a living).  It was literally a data table indexing subroutine that went insane when one of the row labels it worked with was changed do to federal requirements (and political correctness). Turned out to be nothing more than an actual newbie DBA error which I won't go into, but we didn't even notice it (The IT and DBA side) until the testers responsible for testing the billing output noticed certain medications were not getting billed at their typical rate.  What we (us IT and DBA guys) noticed was the system performance was decreased ever so slightly, but not enough to say it could have been normal variance, and just when we were about to write it off, billing came back to us with eyeballs as big as saucers and said something is seriously wrong!  An in-depth RCA found the issue and corrected it, but if that got onto our production servers....hate to even think of the repercussions.

Anyway...I'll stop pontificating, I think we can all agree its a real issue, needs to be investigated and fixed, and probably more importantly as noted above, has not affected the revenue avenues here that keep the lights on.  

Thanks to all for the stimulating conversation surrounding this subject.  To me it only shows our concern and desire to have Avsim up and running like a well-oiled machine as most of us posting here have decades of time invested in this site and our hobby.  I actually gave you guys a reputation heart for participating in this post...kinda' ironic huh? LOL.

[Jim Young 2,356]

We are investigating Steve but the "investigators" have real jobs as well as their volunteer work here at AVSIM.  I think I'm missing posts too.  I understand there's still some indexing of posts going on in the background and that may resolve the issue.  There are some other areas we suspect too.  It just might take some time as this upgrade was massive.

Best regards,

Jim

[rjack1282 316]

I always thought the "unnamed guy" with the ridiculous high post count was just trying to generate advertising for the website link he had in his signature.  The ridiculous nature of his posts would seem to draw people to wonder what he was all about and generate a click on his website.

[Steve Dra 7,588]

1 hour ago, Jim Young said:

We are investigating Steve but the "investigators" have real jobs as well as their volunteer work here at AVSIM.  I think I'm missing posts too.  I understand there's still some indexing of posts going on in the background and that may resolve the issue.  There are some other areas we suspect too.  It just might take some time as this upgrade was massive.

Best regards,

Jim

Completely understand Jim.  I know this will take some time.  I just wanted to make it abundantly clear that I'm not focusing on this issue for the sole purpose of post count pride. 

Now that we've established that, I welcome anymore discussion on how the progress is going.  Although I love armchair QB'ing as much as the next guy, I do this as a career in the real world (RCA's, resolution support, risk mitigation)....so I'll just read what is happening vs adding my comments (well I'll try to resist LOL).  I come here to get away from that, hehe.

[Brian Sperduto 7]

Hi Steve,

Hopefully this helps clear things up a bit for you. Post counts are stored as part of each individuals profile as a simple number attached to your records. Over the years this count is simply incremented each time a user makes a post. As part of the upgrade process the software vendor included a required step which recounted every single member's post count to match the number of posts which were visible and existed at the time of the upgrade. The reason why the vendor did this is unknown to us but it was not an optional step we could bypass. 

There are a few reasons why you may have less posts now than previously. Largest is any forum which existed previously but has been closed and deleted, all those posts have been removed and no longer counted. Another possibility is any topic which has been deleted individually, those posts would not have counted during the recount either. The last possibility which you raised was the possibility of posts being lost during the upgrade. I can assure you that was not the case. As part of the process we verified the total system post counts before and after the upgrade and they matched. All you are seeing now is where prior to the upgrade if you were to add up each member's post count and compare it to the total number of posts in the system you'd find the member's number greater; now you'll find they match. While we would have preferred a choice we were not given the option by the vendor's software and unfortunately it was something we had to go forward with regardless.

I hope this clears everything up

Brian

[Jim Young 2,356]

Thanks Brian.  An explanation came much faster than I had assumed!

Best regards,

Jim

[Steve Dra 7,588]

3 minutes ago, Brian Sperduto said:

Hi Steve,

Hopefully this helps clear things up a bit for you. Post counts are stored as part of each individuals profile as a simple number attached to your records. Over the years this count is simply incremented each time a user makes a post. As part of the upgrade process the software vendor included a required step which recounted every single member's post count to match the number of posts which were visible and existed at the time of the upgrade. The reason why the vendor did this is unknown to us but it was not an optional step we could bypass. 

There are a few reasons why you may have less posts now than previously. Largest is any forum which existed previously but has been closed and deleted, all those posts have been removed and no longer counted. Another possibility is any topic which has been deleted individually, those posts would not have counted during the recount either. The last possibility which you raised was the possibility of posts being lost during the upgrade. I can assure you that was not the case. As part of the process we verified the total system post counts before and after the upgrade and they matched. All you are seeing now is where prior to the upgrade if you were to add up each member's post count and compare it to the total number of posts in the system you'd find the member's number greater; now you'll find they match. While we would have preferred a choice we were not given the option by the vendor's software and unfortunately it was something we had to go forward with regardless.

I hope this clears everything up

Brian

 

Thanks for the info Brian.

Are you saying the number we're now seeing is the new number we have now and nothing can be done to change it?

[Capt Speirs 52]

8 hours ago, Jim Young said:

We are investigating Steve but the "investigators" have real jobs as well as their volunteer work here at AVSIM.  I think I'm missing posts too.  I understand there's still some indexing of posts going on in the background and that may resolve the issue.  There are some other areas we suspect too.  It just might take some time as this upgrade was massive.

Best regards,

Jim

Is there some kind of advantage to having high post count?  

[Jim Young 2,356]

What do you mean? 

[Capt Speirs 52]

On 3/7/2017 at 4:03 AM, Jim Young said:

What do you mean? 

Trying to understand why this fuss over post count. 

[n4gix 4,947]

16 hours ago, Capt Speirs said:

Trying to understand why this fuss over post count. 

Reading the entire thread would answer your question, especially the final paragraph in my reply from last Monday:

Quote

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!

Post counts are automatically generated from actual posts existing in the database. The disparity of my current count and my previous count would seem to indicate that ~20,000 posts are now missing...

[Capt Speirs 52]

9 hours ago, n4gix said:

Reading the entire thread would answer your question, especially the final paragraph in my reply from last Monday:

Post counts are automatically generated from actual posts existing in the database. The disparity of my current count and my previous count would seem to indicate that ~20,000 posts are now missing...

Thanks, now I get it, it's not the count that is important, it's the lost posts. Hope this can be resolved, lots of good info could be missing.

[Brian Sperduto 7]

Let me reiterate something I said earlier. The total number of posts is exactly the same before and after the upgrade. The difference is post that were intentionally deleted a long time ago. An example is a forum that was completely removed along with all it's posts. Put simply nothing is missing