WiKirby History Hole

[Axiomist]

On 12-22-10, WiKirby experienced a server glitch. The glitch erased all of our changes over the course of 1 month. You can read the report I sent our hosting provider:

Customer Service-We're Uberpissed
When Mr. Moody informed me that we needed to upgrade our hosting plan from shared hosting to a node 4 VPS plan; the WiKirby staff and I interpreted it as an accomplishment. We were thrilled to have reached that point in our first year. The plan for our hosting budget had always been to upgrade incrementally to ensure we weren't under-served nor overpaying.

Our first month on VPS seemed to be off to a rocky start, as pages were loading extremely slowly or not at all. We convinced ourselves that the caching we enabled should ease this issue in time. Our focus became less on whimsical cosmetic improvements to the site and more on a goal to reach 600 articles before New Year's Day. As of 12-22-10, we were at 595. Then the glitch that took the website down occurred and during my review of the submitted technical tickets and responses; I noticed the issue still hasn't been clearly explained. All we know is that we didn't make the site crippling change in the cpanel.

Once the site came back online, all of the editor's work done since the move to the VPS plan has disappeared. The database seems to have been wiped to just before the move took place. So basically, I paid $47 for a month of work that we didn't even get to keep. Insulting to say the least. All previous times this was worked around by using our the database backup restore from our cron job. Immediately we attempted this and discovered that our cron job schedule was deleted from the cpanel, leaving us with absolutely no up-to-date backup. The technician handling the tickets I submitted seemed to either avoid admitting data was lost or was unable to grasp that my site has a permanent hole blown in it's history from 11-25-10 to 12-22-10, which is exactly our time on VPS.

One such edit lost in the time on TMD's VPS was done by a frequent WiKirby visitor. A young girl made a list of her favorite things in life. Much to our surprise, at #3 she listed WiKirby and this was the only website on her list. In my view, it isn't the customer (me), nor WiKirby staff that TMD failed, but the undemanding regular visitors that hold WiKirby in such a high regard. She clearly would not understand what is and isn't in our control and may believe we callously deleted her expressed feelings towards the site.

While I'm paying for the next month of service, out of inconvenience with the amount of time between the bill and time needed to move; I'm sure the WiKirby staff, editors, and visitors could agree while the latest server glitch wasn't the largest, it was the most devastating. We and our affiliated network of MediaWiki sites (http://niwanetwork.org/) may not see a future with TMD

Given that they've yet to explain how this happened, and seem to avoid acknowledging that data was lost, I'm forced to draw my own conclusions. I'm guessing this was the result of extreme ineptitude on their end, and not a deliberate design to sabotage our work. But it still hurts us as WiKirby's history is now missing a huge chunk!

We can turn this around, mind you, we can make it so that the missing piece is not the heart and spirit of the editors, but just some number of views, dates and times in the creation logs. The 70ish articles can be rebuilt. Many of them are temporarily existing in Google's cache. If anyone has any free time to find even one thing lost, and resubmit it to WiKirby, you have my appreciation. The casual reader or occasional wiki editor may not fully understand what a server glitch is and how that's out of our control. I fear they may believe we made the deletions or something. It's up to the NIWA elite to show WiKirby will still be vibrant.

Also, NWiki, Strategy Wiki, and Smash Wiki offer great potential for strong cross-wiki ties. We haven't been able to fully work as we were trying to get Kirby's Epic Yarn content covered. If any one of you can document one Kirby Game on NWiki and link to WiKirby, or even document one console and link to NWiki-You can help both of these wikis. Create a Strategy guide for your favorite Kirby level and link to WiKirby, or offer the link to levels covered on SW in WK articles. Implement SmashWiki links to indepth Smash Bros content in relevant pages on WiKirby. All of those things can help other Kirby fans find WiKirby and the associated wikis. Our staff team has primarily been me and Vellidragon so we haven't been able to do those things ourselves as much as we'd like.

[Maxite]

Do you or anyone else have a list of what pages went missing, or what pages had major updates lost? I'll look on my own to see what I can find, but a bit of help in telling me or others what to look for wouldn't be too shabby.

[Axiomist]

Nope, Vellidragon and I worked in tandem, she added KDL3 articles, mostly enemies. And I worked on Epic Yarn ones, mostly levels. One sub-game, "Going Out". And all affiliate work such as the sidebar, Interwiki links in the MediaWiki:Edittools, etc disappeared. I just tried to edit and got a message that another database restore is being attempted. It must be from the server guys, bc I didn't do it, and Adam hasn't mentioned anything.

[Miles of SmashWiki]

I can at least give you this much: SmashWiki's working on providing useful interwiki links out; that is, for additional in-universe information, links to appropriate NIWA members.

So Mr. Resetti has a link to ACWiki, Quick Attack to Bulbapedia, Diddy Kong to DKWiki, Isaac to Golden Sun Universe, Smart Bomb to LylatWiki, Petey Piranha to MarioWiki, Meta Ridley to Metroid Wiki, Wii to N-Wiki, Distant Planet to Pikipedia, Infantry & Tanks to Wars Wiki, PK Starstorm to WikiBound, Star Rod to WiKirby and Bunny Hood to ZeldaWiki, to provide an example per wiki.  (We're still working on an arrangement with StrategyWiki, and Pikmin Fanon's content doesn't exactly relate, so they're outliers.)

Point being, NIWA wikis (including, of course, WiKirby!) are getting links FROM SmashWiki as well.

[Axiomist]

Cool, We're back! About SSB, I've never played any of those games But I do know the only thing I really want covered on WiKirby is:

• A series page, full of links to SmashWiki
• Article covering each game and how Kirby elements are used, Internal links in the article body, external links in the footer, and a template offering more coverage at SmashWiki, and the link for strategy at StrategyWiki.
• Mentions of SSB placement of characters/items/powers below Kirby series sections and above anime sections (where applicable)

What I don't want is full SSB documentation like ZW once had. So no Snake articles, etc...

[Nintendoguy1]

Cool, We're back! About SSB, I've never played any of those games But I do know the only thing I really want covered on WiKirby is:

• A series page, full of links to SmashWiki
• Article covering each game and how Kirby elements are used, Internal links in the article body, external links in the footer, and a template offering more coverage at SmashWiki, and the link for strategy at StrategyWiki.
• Mentions of SSB placement of characters/items/powers below Kirby series sections and above anime sections (where applicable)

What I don't want is full SSB documentation like ZW once had. So no Snake articles, etc...

*whistles innocently*

[Naesala]

Cool, We're back! About SSB, I've never played any of those games But I do know the only thing I really want covered on WiKirby is:

• A series page, full of links to SmashWiki
• Article covering each game and how Kirby elements are used, Internal links in the article body, external links in the footer, and a template offering more coverage at SmashWiki, and the link for strategy at StrategyWiki.
• Mentions of SSB placement of characters/items/powers below Kirby series sections and above anime sections (where applicable)

What I don't want is full SSB documentation like ZW once had. So no Snake articles, etc...

What about Master/Crazy Hand both are from SSB but were bosses in KatAM.

[Axiomist]

Cool, We're back! About SSB, I've never played any of those games But I do know the only thing I really want covered on WiKirby is:

• A series page, full of links to SmashWiki
• Article covering each game and how Kirby elements are used, Internal links in the article body, external links in the footer, and a template offering more coverage at SmashWiki, and the link for strategy at StrategyWiki.
• Mentions of SSB placement of characters/items/powers below Kirby series sections and above anime sections (where applicable)

What I don't want is full SSB documentation like ZW once had. So no Snake articles, etc...

What about Master/Crazy Hand both are from SSB but were bosses in KatAM.

Those are fine. We also have a Mario article, which is legit since Mario keeps popping up in Kirby games, that could have an SSB section. But more as a brief summary recommending further reading at Mario wiki and SmashWiki.

[Nintendoguy1]

Hey let's get back on topic, shall we?

[Nathan]

I know this may sound odd coming from me given MW's recent down time due to lay payment of bills (which is fixed btw!), but uh, if you are every looking for new hosting due to this our doors are wide open. We can discuss fees later, or I can simply set you up on our server for a set cost a month, with upgrades to that server done as needed (or, better yet, set you up with your own server). Your own server is going to run you between 30 and 40 dollars a month with our set up, but the real cost I guess is in the intial server setup. These servers are raw, so unless you know anything about setting them up we'll need to buy a new cpanel license for you, and install all the needed scripts. We would then be available for customer service at a cost if it's anything that requires serious work, but for the most part you cna self manage EVERYTHING through WHM once we set you up.


In the end, it ends up being cheaper than VPS, more reliable, and has better service. This is regardless of joining us on MW's server for either a "cost" or simply for putting our kontera ad code on your site, or simply having your own private server.

Just wanted to throw this out there. IT's really available for most any semi-successful wiki. Unfortunately, we wont take the risk of hosting really tiny wiki;s on servers simply because, well, every new site we are not operating ourselves is an additional security risk.

[Koroku]

Wow. That seriously sucks. At least you got some sort of back-up... when Wikimon server crashed, we lost everything and had to start over.

I was not a very popular person at the time.


I'll toss out the same offer though for hosting. Lemme know if you wanna join GSU and Wikimon

[Axiomist]

Remind me again why MarioWiki has an article on Snake...?

I swear, MarioWiki's coverage of Smash will always seem suspect to me.

Because it is an extended part of the Mario series, and we cover everything related to the mario series, that includes Super Smash Bros. And because our Coverage says so, we are a wiki covering the Mario series, and being Nintendo's mascot, they have sub-series, and series related, and cameos and all that. So we cover them all. Even Banjo and Conker. In some way. People have complained, but we aren't changing it

If you don't mind me asking it, why not?

I mind! Like I said in the "Self-evaluation/NIWA team" thread, topics are going haywire from the original discussion. At some point, some one will have to bring the new topic to another thread. That's now, bc I'm not interested in seeing a debate on Mario Wiki's coverage, which would no doubt bring up DK coverage.

Back on topic, we're moving mid-January.

[Justin]

I was just about to say that. Please please PLEASE try to keep on topic.

Also, the off-topic posts have been split into their own topic.

[Axiomist]

If anyone is willing to help restore everything, This download contains everything Vellidragon was able to find through Google's Cache pages. It's unformatted, so there's some work to be done, just leave in the edit summary that you "Restored from cache" or such and we'll know.