Big day today:
Modded @Yuv, @Tilted, @econophile, @clovis8, and @anon29622970 based on the results here.
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anonymized ggoreo account
anonymized SenorKeed account
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- De-admin’d goreo at his request.
- De-modded @Riverman and @catfacemeowmers as their 6-month terms were up.
- De-modded @anon29622970 and @clovis8 at their request
I was able to undelete any threads that got deleted when I deleted my posts. The software logs all staff actions so I could restore them from the logs. Threads deleted by non-staff users aren’t logged so I was unable to restore the Bangers thread
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Messed around with creating a new user (spidertest1), giving that user enhanced trust levels, letting the user start new threads and send PMs. Then I changed ownership of the thread created by the new user and deleted that new user to see how deleting the user would affect the threads originally created by that user. Also checked tried to look at the admin logs to see the treatment of the PMs created by the deleted user, but I’m not sure I looked in the right place. Anyway, anyone checking the admin activity will see me doing those things.
The reason for me doing this is that I wanted to confirm that I am able to delete user profiles without disrupting the site too much. I anticipate deleting user accounts on request, probably with some waiting/cooling off period, but retaining all threads created by those users by changing ownership of the original post.
Edit: since this is just a log, if people want to talk about the idea of account deletions, probably this thread is most appropriate for that discussion:
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I’ve changed a forum-wide setting to allow users to edit their posts indefinitely. (This was previously set at 30 days, at least for Trust Level 2 users.) An important note, and the primary driver for this change, is that the editing window applies to PMs as well.
Stepping back, it’s probably worth reminding everyone that the admins here (currently me and olink) have incredible power, which includes the ability to open and read unencrypted PMs in message threads that we are not a part of. This is definitely not me announcing that I intend to start reading PMs. But it’s a reminder that that ability is a necessary part of the admin’s role. I am extending the editing window so that anyone who is concerned about admins reading their PMs can go back to old PMs and edit any information they are particularly concerned about.
It’s possible that people could use this expanded editing for bad purposes, and if so I can imagine returning the window to 30 days. But I’m going to assume that you all are good people and aren’t going to abuse this. (I guess what I have in mind is posting/DMing bad stuff, editing that bad stuff, and then denying that it was ever written/sent.)
If this is something you want to talk more about, we can discuss it in one of the site’s OG threads:
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Deleted @goofyballer at his request and after a cooling off period.
Prior to deleting his account, I changed ownership of the original post in all public threads that he started (to new user @ThreadStarter). So, assuming that was done correctly, no threads were deleted.
For anyone looking in the logs, you’ll see that I changed some settings in order to perform the deletion (maximum post deletions per minute, maximum post deletions per day, maximum post age of deleted user, and maximum user posts that can be deleted). All of those settings are now back at their original values.
Deleted @forechecker and his alt @forechecker_out at his request.
Discussion of account deletions should be had here:
Deleted @Surf at his request.
Deleted a somewhat blog-like thread with substantial personal information at the request of the topic creator.
Making this public, since it’s about the most invasive action an admin can do:
I read a user’s PM to verify that the user had received a threatening personal message. The user gave me advance permission to do it, and it resulted in the following permaban:
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2 admin actions:
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Anonymized commonwealth’s account at his request. Going forward, I think this will be how I handle any requests to have accounts deleted. Anonymizing is so much easier for me than deleting (particularly for a user with many posts), and it leaves the forum intact, that it’s hard to justify deletion vs. anonymizing.
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Upgraded the site software. Here, I’m going to describe the process with a bit of detail so that I (or someone else) can easily remember how in the future. Here’s the warning you get when you log in to the admin panel:
In theory, this is an easy process. When you click the link to upgrade, you’re sent to page with multiple components that may or may not have upgrades available. For example, even though I just upgraded universally, there are already a couple of things available:
Before I upgraded, I think every single one of these items was out of date. What made it a little trickier was that the “Upgrade All” button, which I desperately wanted to press, was not active. After a little googling, it was apparent that the first thing that had to be upgraded was the docker_manager. That was simple. But even after that, I still couldn’t upgrade via button press, presumably because we were so far behind on software releases. So I had to do it manually. As described here, I had to:
- SSH into the server
- Switch to root (this was the step that wasn’t spelled out, and I was getting frustrated that things weren’t working)
- change to the /var/discourse directory, and then run “./launcher rebuild app”
Once i was logged in as root, that started the very long upgrade process that, surprisingly, was happening even as people continued to post on the site. I was just watching the command line window like
After a while, everything seemed to turn out ok, and we were on the latest software:
Most everything seems to be smooth, except for a few issues. The most notable one is that my notifications were filled with things like “posts edited” and “posts moved” that were not at all recent. I have no idea why these were marked as new. But clicking on the Dismiss box at the bottom of the notification window:
seems to have permanently cleared those old notifications.
Second, I was initially irritated by the change in layout, particularly that box to the left:
But just clicking the hamburger menu in the top left corner makes that go away.
Finally, there’s a new chat bubble/tool available in the upper right corner (next to search). If you find that irritating, you can make it disappear by going to preferences/chat and unclicking “Enable chat”:
I don’t know anything about custom themes and whether they work or not. That’s probably beyond my capacity to address.
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Anonymized jake7777’s account at his request.