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[Kotik]

Sounds like someone rummages around in the database. Stories are mapped to series's (or however you spell that) by foreign keys. Either some FK's are wrecked (which would be a veritable disaster) or some WHERE clause is botched and collects a wee bit more than it is supposed to.

It looks as if the "Missing Scenes" are quite wrecked at the moment The series summaries don't load because the template is missing, so I suppose someone currently tries to correct the above-mentioned problem. Let's wait...

[justTripn]

My stories in the archive look right. Does this mean all is well again? Thank you magical IT wizards.

[Alelou]

"The Council" is back, so something's right.

I'm not sure it's a good idea having all those episodes listed separately with no series holding them together, especially where season 3 and 4 get all mixed up together, but I'm also sure it's not worth the effort to go back and put them in a series.

[justTripn]

Whoops. Are they mixed up because of spelling inconsistencies? If so, I can fix that. I'm about to go on vacation, but keep bugging me. I do want to do it.

[Weeble]

Bug Bug Bug

[Alelou]

I don't know. I suspect it's something to do with the date. It shows Season 4 going in the same year as season 3 and overlapping, which doesn't make sense to me.

[Kotik]

Thank you magical IT wizards.

I'm sorry to be the one, who relieves himself all over your bonfire, but there's nothing magical about taking the site down for two weeks and putting it back up, broken (and making every known beginners error of web design in the process).

The problem with Alelou's stories is indeed down to the fact that the stories are sorted by date. Since it is practically impossible to eff up a simple 'SORT BY publish_date ASC', it is probably down to the fact that the date comes from a different table than the story title and someone made a monkey's breakfast of the inner join. That way the wrong date got assigned to the stories. Since we've seen several botched up foreign keys in the past and present (like comments showing up below the wrong story or everyone suddenly having a chapter of Asso's story in his works) this could be a similar query error.

Of course there's also the possibility that someone wrecked a few tables, but I think we're more likely looking at some changes in the db model gone wrong (or forgotten to update SQL queries to reflect the changed data model). Several indicators are there that the latter might be the case.

• The 'Series Summary pages' are gone. I posted four links to Alelou's "Missing Scenes" in my classics thread. They're all broken.
• While it is technically sound to store standalone stories as stories with exactly one chapter, the site does now show a chapter selector for these stories. That wasn't the case before. That leads me to suspect that changes have been made in the area of the database that maps chapters to stories.
• The access statistics are gone. The query that reads the access counts very obviously returns a NULL record. That means that either the access data have been accidentally deleted or the query is syntactically wrong and therefore doesn't return any values.

Of course, due to the unique way this site update was handled (read: not very well) and communicated (read: not at all), we could just as well be looking at an update that actually isn't finished yet.

[Distracted]

Sigh.

Kotik, why can't you make glitch observations without interspersing them with personal insults? Thank you for your observations. I have passed them on. But mudslinging regarding the technical capabilities of our volunteer tech staff is NOT allowed on this forum. I have warned you privately, but obviously it didn't stick. So here goes.

Admin note: If you have an issue or complaint related to the technical competence of our volunteer staff members who take time out from their busy schedules to work to make this a better site without being paid a cent, PM me or Elessar in private. Any further ad hominem attacks on any of our volunteer staff will be met with immediate banning. Just in case it's not clear, calling someone incompetent when they are doing their best to help you for free constitutes an ad hominem attack in my book.

Are we clear now? I hope so. Carry on. Observations are welcome, BTW. We're still in the testing phase of this new system.

[Kotik]

I don't think I was insulting in my observations, but that is probably a case of differing sensibilities. I think I delivered the facts to backup any of my observations, but since programmers among themselves tend to be rather straightforward it might sound somewhat harsh to others.

As per your request I won't comment on it any further, hoping that somehow the problems get fixed. Since you deleted the complete post, not only the parts that you took exception in, I'll have to rely on you to either relay the technically relevant observations to the tech team if appropriate.

[Distracted]

I didn't delete your most recent post, Kotik. Only the first one, which was a great deal more "straightforward" than the last one.

Just a hint. Reporting glitches - without adding any imbellishment about the competency of the person doing the updating or about how annoyed you are that it wasn't done another way because that way is the only way a truly intelligent person would ever perform the task - will always be favorably received. Leave people and emotions out of it. Just report what you see, and we're good.

[Kotik]

Ah, my mistake. I thought you had deleted the post. Guess my people skills are not really up to the task

[Distracted]

Ah, but skills can be learned if a willing student can be found, my padawan.