During December we announced that Fandom (previously known as Wikia) had entered into an agreement to acquire Curse Media from Twitch, Curse Media is the company which owns the Minecraft Forum and various other video game websites, such as Gamepedia (home of the Minecraft Wiki). That deal closed this week and Curse Media is now owned and operated by Fandom.
Due to recent changes in European law -- specifically, the introduction of the GDPR -- a company must obtain opt-in consent from users located within the European Economic Area to transfer ownership of their data during acquisitions. Each user that we identified as being covered under this law was given multiple opportunities to consent to the transfer of their data, through emails and an on-forum pop-up (which displayed every 5 minutes until consent was obtained).
Last week, prior to the close of the deal, we closed our consent opt-in service and began removing all content from the Minecraft Forum that we did not have consent to transfer to Fandom ownership. This process involved the removal of around 1 million users and 10 million posts. As a consequence of this removal of data there are a large number of posts and threads that are no longer available on the Minecraft Forum. We appreciate that this is very disruptive but it was necessary to meet our legal obligations under the GDPR.
At this time we are unable to offer the ability to restore deleted posts.
FAQ
1. My account was deleted and I would like to continue using the forum
You are welcome to continue to use the Minecraft Forum if your account has been deleted, you can either create a new account or reclaim your previous account. Reclaiming you previous account is easy, first log in to the Minecraft Forum and then go to My Account and enter your nickname in the form at the bottom of the page. After you have reclaimed your account you will be able to continue to use the forum however your posts will not be restored. Please note that by reclaiming your account you are providing consent for your data to be transferred.
2. I am trying to visit a thread that has been deleted ("HTTP Code: 404 Status Text: error", or "Not found")
Unfortunately many of the most popular threads on the forum were created by users within the EEA who did not consent to the transfer of their data. Their threads have been deleted and unless we obtain their consent (through the reclamation of their account) we will not be able to restore their thread.
3. My account was deleted but I do not remember being asked for my consent
Each user identified as being within the EEA would have received 4 emails to the email address their account is registered under, additionally a pop-up was displayed on every Minecraft Forum page every 5 minutes. Due to the use of AdBlock and NoScript by some users the consent pop-up may have been blocked.
4. I would like my posts restored
At this time we will not restore posts and threads.
If you have a question that is not covered here please respond to this thread, or if you would like to speak directly to our support team please submit a ticket. Please do not privately contact Minecraft Forum staff members to ask for your posts to be recovered.
As one of the 1 million affected users, I would like to note the following:
1 - The notification emails you sent out were sent to my old (now unused) email adress I used when joining the forums 6 years ago, not to the current email I provided to my Twitch account, which the forum uses now. This is the reason I did not notice the transfer right away until my threads and posts have been deleted. I still haven't recieved any information why you did it this way, but I'm pretty certain something went wrong here.
2 - I've never seen any pop-up appearing on the forums hinting the transition to Fandom. It is not completely out of question that add-block ate it, but that's still strange as it only blocks web elements that are explicitely marked as adds. I've seen all other pop-ups appearing in the past too, even the one telling people to transfer their forum accounts to Twitch. Why would exactly this one be supressed by add-block? (Also, please don't come with "why u not deactivate add block? blablabla ... I've cought malicious stuff through adds in the past, also at least 90% of adds on the internet are pure cancer, especially the ones with sound. Not even talking about how much faster websites load with add-block ... the MC forums are no exception here. I'm not turning it off, never again!)
So yeah, I was completely unaware this purge is happening. I totally understand the GDPR and it's not a bad law, but it requires every company to give people a clear option to consent or opt out of any kind of data usage or data transfer. I did not recieve this option in any proper way. I get the feeling there might have been a few mistakes on your side, or not? I mean, the transition to Twitch worked flawlessly ...
I'm sure I'm not the only one having years worth of forum posts deleted out of nowhere, so what do you guys think? Anyone else out there who recieved zero information before having his stuff deleted?
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
"Better than Default" v2.6 for MC 1.15 is available now!
As one of the 1 million affected users, I would like to note the following:
1 - The notification emails you sent out were sent to my old (now unused) email adress I used when joining the forums 6 years ago, not to the current email I provided to my Twitch account, which the forum uses now. This is the reason I did not notice the transfer right away until my threads and posts have been deleted. I still haven't recieved any information why you did it this way, but I'm pretty certain something went wrong here.
2 - I've never seen any pop-up appearing on the forums hinting the transition to Fandom. It is not completely out of question that add-block ate it, but that's still strange as it only blocks web elements that are explicitely marked as adds. I've seen all other pop-ups appearing in the past too, even the one telling people to transfer their forum accounts to Twitch. Why would exactly this one be supressed by add-block? (Also, please don't come with "why u not deactivate add block? blablabla ... I've cought malicious stuff through adds in the past, also at least 90% of adds on the internet are pure cancer, especially the ones with sound. Not even talking about how much faster websites load with add-block ... the MC forums are no exception here. I'm not turning it off, never again!)
So yeah, I was completely unaware this purge is happening. I totally understand the GDPR and it's not a bad law, but it requires every company to give people a clear option to consent or opt out of any kind of data usage or data transfer. I did not recieve this option in any proper way. I get the feeling there might have been a few mistakes on your side, or not? I mean, the transition to Twitch worked flawlessly ...
I'm sure I'm not the only one having years worth of forum posts deleted out of nowhere, so what do you guys think? Anyone else out there who recieved zero information before having his stuff deleted?
1. I am sorry that this has happened. I cannot speak to the methodology through which we identified your contact address but I believe it was based on the email address we were sending all other contact to. There is the possibility that there was a forum bug (independent of this process) which incorrectly referenced your email address.
2. AdBlock and similar plugins work by identifying elements and scripts on a webpage it believes to be bad and interferes with them; from simply removing elements to blocking requests, there are a lot of different ways which these plugins can modify the behaviour of a website. The consent pop-up we used depended upon a consent service we operated within Curse but outside the Minecraft Forum and so it's possible that your browser plugin identified the system as bad by virtue of it being hosted on a separate domain and blocked it. This is, unfortunately, a risk you take when using a plugin like AdBlock.
The transition to Twitch ownership in 2016 did not involve any consent process, so it is not comparable, as there were no user facing changes. The transition into Twitch was before GDPR came into force, meaning that we did not need to seek consent from any users to transfer their data (in the same way we did not seek consent from non-EEA users during the Fandom transition).
MinecraftForum followed the correct procedures and if your account was removed, then something was wrong on either your end, or something out of peoples control. Please do not blame any certain person for this.
I'm not blaming anyone specific, I'm just trying to point out that something might, in fact, not have worked correctly here. Before deleting 1 million users and 10 million forum posts, you make absolutely sure everyone's aware of it. I doubt it is part of the correct procedure to send notifications to an obsolete email I used for my Curse account 6 years ago. I'm using Twitch to log-in into this forum. I did not recieve any information via the email adress provided to my Twitch account. If Curse is being bought by Fandom from Twitch, I would expect Twitch to inform me about this and how it affects me via the contact data I gave them. I got nothing. Otherwise we wouldn't have this problem in the first place.
It would just be interesting if anyone else had a similar surprise when checking his forum threads, and how easy it would be to restore the lost content from a server backup or something like that. Dunno. We'll see
Looking forward to updates on this ...
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
"Better than Default" v2.6 for MC 1.15 is available now!
I have partially to agree with the above since a THIRD of all posts/threads have been removed (you can see how many there used to be here) - that is certainly not the result of a "few" users failing to get notifications but the vast majority of all EU users.
Granted, part of this is because a majority of members simply no longer use the forums and I doubt that most of them will ever return (if they are able to recover data at all by consenting), though I've seen a lot of members who were on relatively recently who were purged, and they could have at least done something to save old posts/threads, like just changing their names to something anonymous and clearing any information in their profiles (as was done).
This doesn't just affect the forums but everything that links to it, including using it as a source (for example, the Wiki has linked to forum threads documenting game behavior), and things like this are exactly why sites like the Internet Archive were created (you can't guarantee that anything posted online will remain forever), but you have to actually know the URLs to find them and not everything is archived (for example, you want to download some old mod but the download links do not work since they were not archived).
Also, the number of lost posts may be even greater than reported; I'm missing over 1600 posts, as listed here when compared to the post count stated at the top (512 pages * 15 per page = 7680 vs 9307), which seems to still count all of them (posts that were actually deleted by moderators do seem to detract from the total), and if that also applies to the overall count for the forums then around 3-4 million additional posts have effectively been removed (there isn't any reason why they can't be available in the member's profile but not link to a thread, similar to how the deleted usernames do not link to a profile).
MinecraftForum followed the correct procedures and if your account was removed, then something was wrong on either your end, or something out of peoples control. Please do not blame any certain person for this.
As I stated in the other thread, they could have just sent at least in forum PMs. Those had been received by any ACTIVE user.
So that is not on "our end", neither is this "out of peoples control". It's just sloppy.
As I also stated in the other thread, BEFORE deleting accounts and all posts, they could have deactivated them some time before the transfer was done. This also had pushed active users to follow the procedure (which the majority obviously didn't even know about now).
Yes, there's nothing to do about inactive users, but the damage caused could have been a way lower than it is now.
Beside this, I'm still not even sure, if it was even necessary to delete the forum contents at all, as to my understanding the whole law is about personal data. But that's another story and I'm no lawyer unfortunately.
I don't live in Europe and never have been there. The poster states it only contacted people in Europe when i know my account was set to Australia and have never been to the European Union. Something went wrong on your end.
2. I am trying to visit a thread that has been deleted ("HTTP Code: 404 Status Text: error", or "Not found")
Unfortunately many of the most popular threads on the forum were created by users within the EEA who did not consent to the transfer of their data. Their threads have been deleted and unless we obtain their consent (through the reclamation of their account) we will not be able to restore their thread.
Since I am still able to visit my own threads that were deleted (OP shows as deleted) and see the replies in those threads of users whose account was not deleted, I know for a hard fact that the messages in these threads that were not explicitly deleted themselves.
As such, citricsquid, even if it turns out that deleted thread OPs and other messages can not be restored in the future, might you still pursue to make these deleted threads visible again? Or at least their non-deleted content?
I don't live in Europe and never have been there. The poster states it only contacted people in Europe when i know my account was set to Australia and have never been to the European Union. Something went wrong on your end.
If the system could not identify you as not living in the EU, you should have had the e-mails and pop-ups before your account was deleted. Even if you actually live in Australia.
Please understand that they had to make sure. That is how laws work.
@TheMasterCaver
Based on the % of pages that disappeared of Azanor's Thaumcraft thread, which is about 14% I would estimate that about 25% of all messages on the MC forums (0,14 + (1 - 0,14) * 0,14) got either deleted directly, or hidden in deleted threads. I don't know where you get your "third of all posts/threads," but extrapolation says that it isn't quite as bad as you state, so I'd like to hear your reasoning.
@everyone who cares to listen to my rant:
Fandom... I am a member of +- 60 pretty active Minecraft related Discords and not once have I heard about the sale/change of ownership of these forums to Fandom before my account was deleted.
The big news in the MC community right now is that Azanor seems to have stopped modding for good. There were mentions about all of the user accounts being deleted on these forums, even on Discords in which I was not the one who brought it up, but that was the news; not the change of ownership of the forums to Fandom.
On top of that, every time this forum changes hands, this seems to be joined with a tremendous loss of users and in this case even the loss of a quarter of our historical data.
When I joined these forums they were a great place to meet new people, get valuable information about Minecraft and modding and joke around.
I am sad to see this forum decline in this way. And it seems like it's not slowing down either. It's speeding up.
The less the forum is useful to its users, the less it is worth to the owner, the more likely they are to sell or get rid of it, the less useful it becomes to its users. It's a vicious cycle and there is no stopping it.
At the current rate, I wonder if these forums will even exist anymore in 5 years...
Can we just archive it the way it is, so it can not get any worse?
"I let people see how horrendous my code is specifically so it can become less bad." ~ Spirit 2018-10-18
"Never, ever, EVER give a maid a bazooka..." ~ CaerMaster 2018-02-10
"When in doubt read Zsashas' Signature " ~ Vadis365 2016-09-09
"Your post count reflects your uncertainty more than it does your knowledge." ~ Me
For clarity: the situation is that posts have been soft deleted and while there is no technical reason we cannot restore posts, it is effectively impossible for us to restore them because we do not have any tools available, and doing it post by post by hand would take hundreds of moderator hours, potentially thousands depending on the reclamation rate. I am not willing to commit the forum staff to that, I think it would be deeply unfair to expect volunteers to perform that task.
The intention is for an automated process to be built and launched -- that's what the form is for expressing an interest in -- but I cannot guarantee that will happen due to the resources required. Realistically, if that process is launched then we expect to see full recovery of all posts belonging to reclaimed users, if that process isn't launched then I do not expect to see the majority of posts restored.
I have let moderators make a decision on an individual basis if they wish to restore posts of reclaimed users, however I haven't publicised this in the announcement because I don't wish moderators to be inundated with requests.
@TheMasterCaver
Based on the % of pages that disappeared of Azanor's Thaumcraft thread, which is about 14% I would estimate that about 25% of all messages on the MC forums (0,14 + (1 - 0,14) * 0,14) got either deleted directly, or hidden in deleted threads. I don't know where you get your "third of all posts/threads," but extrapolation says that it isn't quite as bad as you state, so I'd like to hear your reasoning.
19,922,321 / 29,600,977 = 0.673, or 32.7% of posts deleted. The loss isn't as bad, around 25%, for threads/views, but that may just be because more popular threads weren't affected as much relative to all threads. Also, as mentioned before, it may not accurately be counting all deleted posts; many users, not just myself, are shown to have made more posts than are actually shown on their profile page.
Also, even prior to this many of the more popular subforums lost posts over the past year or so; for example, Survival Mode had 1,203,348 posts on the 10th, while it had 1,205,090 on 10/12/2017 (here is a list I made of activity over the years; since 2017 you can't even use this anymore to measure activity. Many other subforums also saw losses).
I also find the decrease in activity over the years to be bizarre given that the forums have continued to gain members at a healthy rate, even if not as high as it used to be - more than 100,000 over the past year (none appear to actually have been removed from the member count given on the main page; if anything, there has been a recent surge in new members, 26,000 over the past week, possibly due to deleted members re-registering with new accounts, which still leaves a gain of nearly 100,000 before then).
My old account had not previously been connected to a twitch account, and the sign in page doesn't accept any login except one from Twitch. How can I gain access to my old account? My previous account was capSAR273, and still exists, but I have no way to log in to it.
I understand that you need to remove poster's personal information when they can't be contacted, but why is the content of threads being removed?
Many of these threads are linked to from other sources (like the wiki etc) and contain historically important information about projects, mods and utilities used over the years on Minecraft.
The content of threads is not private information - it is publicly posted information. I think you need to speak to your lawyers again regarding content versus personal data as it seems there's been a misunderstanding of the task at hand.
Wouldn't it be better to hang posts on anonymised pseudo users, and remove all the account records? You guys are also custodians of history, not just a forum.
While GDPR compliance may well have necessitated the removal of posts by residents of GDPR recognizing countries whose affirmative opt-in could not be obtained, the wholesale removal of many other posts (not, unfortunately, falling under GDPR protections) is most regrettable.
It is to be hopped that the posts requiring removal can be nulled and access to the other posts in the threads restored in sort order.
Failure to do so will consign a number of carefully reasoned and helpful posts to the memory hole.
It will also encourage replys that 'reinvent the wheel' as it is no longer viable to simply link to a previous discussion covering a point.
This will be particularly unpleasant with regards to any topic likely to generate controversy: linking to a multipage discussion of an issue from some time ago is unlikely to inspire 'flamish' replys; restating the relevant arguments [even if done as even handledly as possible], much more so.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
DO NOT PM me, I am currently locked out of the PM system.
"Why does everything have to be so stoopid?" Harvey Pekar (from American Splendor)
WARNING: I have an extemely "grindy" playstyle; YMMV — if this doesn't seem fun to you, mine what you can from it & bin the rest.
The content of threads is not private information - it is publicly posted information. I think you need to speak to your lawyers again regarding content versus personal data as it seems there's been a misunderstanding of the task at hand.
I cannot speak to reasoning behind the decisions made by Amazon's lawyers as I am not a legal professional, however I am confident in the decisions they have made. Given the high stakes (just today Google was fined €50,000,000 for GDPR violations) it is understandable that they would exercise caution.
I appreciate that this is deeply unfortunate and has far reaching consequences for the community but it was determined to be the right course of action to comply with our legal obligations. This forum has been my entire career, for the last decade I have watched the forum grow post by post and it is very sad to see so much of the history wiped out. I would love for there to be a way to save the history but our legal obligations come first.
Further it is weird, that threads/Posts have been deleted - but profile pictures not.
Profile pics are much more of "personal data" (especially when it's a rl pic).
Even if not visible in public, it still has been there, which means, it must have been still somewhere in your database.
Not that I'd be personally disturbed by that, just the whole thing doesn't follow any logic.
Profile pictures have been deleted, but not necessarily at the same time as other content/info linked to an account.
I have my own account as an example of this.
"I let people see how horrendous my code is specifically so it can become less bad." ~ Spirit 2018-10-18
"Never, ever, EVER give a maid a bazooka..." ~ CaerMaster 2018-02-10
"When in doubt read Zsashas' Signature " ~ Vadis365 2016-09-09
"Your post count reflects your uncertainty more than it does your knowledge." ~ Me
Profile pictures have been deleted, but not necessarily at the same time as other content/info linked to an account.
I have my own account as an example of this.
I had 2 profile pictures uploaded, one of them was deleted, the other not.
Nothing deters people from using a forum more than having to re-register several times because of "acquisitions" and having threads lost than this.
Why doesn't Minecraft simply host their own forum instead of having several transfers? I can honestly say, if I need to register again, I will simply not peruse the forum anymore as it's not worth the hassle.
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Retired StaffDuring December we announced that Fandom (previously known as Wikia) had entered into an agreement to acquire Curse Media from Twitch, Curse Media is the company which owns the Minecraft Forum and various other video game websites, such as Gamepedia (home of the Minecraft Wiki). That deal closed this week and Curse Media is now owned and operated by Fandom.
Due to recent changes in European law -- specifically, the introduction of the GDPR -- a company must obtain opt-in consent from users located within the European Economic Area to transfer ownership of their data during acquisitions. Each user that we identified as being covered under this law was given multiple opportunities to consent to the transfer of their data, through emails and an on-forum pop-up (which displayed every 5 minutes until consent was obtained).
Last week, prior to the close of the deal, we closed our consent opt-in service and began removing all content from the Minecraft Forum that we did not have consent to transfer to Fandom ownership. This process involved the removal of around 1 million users and 10 million posts. As a consequence of this removal of data there are a large number of posts and threads that are no longer available on the Minecraft Forum. We appreciate that this is very disruptive but it was necessary to meet our legal obligations under the GDPR.
At this time we are unable to offer the ability to restore deleted posts.
FAQ
1. My account was deleted and I would like to continue using the forum
You are welcome to continue to use the Minecraft Forum if your account has been deleted, you can either create a new account or reclaim your previous account. Reclaiming you previous account is easy, first log in to the Minecraft Forum and then go to My Account and enter your nickname in the form at the bottom of the page. After you have reclaimed your account you will be able to continue to use the forum however your posts will not be restored. Please note that by reclaiming your account you are providing consent for your data to be transferred.
2. I am trying to visit a thread that has been deleted ("HTTP Code: 404 Status Text: error", or "Not found")
Unfortunately many of the most popular threads on the forum were created by users within the EEA who did not consent to the transfer of their data. Their threads have been deleted and unless we obtain their consent (through the reclamation of their account) we will not be able to restore their thread.
3. My account was deleted but I do not remember being asked for my consent
Each user identified as being within the EEA would have received 4 emails to the email address their account is registered under, additionally a pop-up was displayed on every Minecraft Forum page every 5 minutes. Due to the use of AdBlock and NoScript by some users the consent pop-up may have been blocked.
4. I would like my posts restored
At this time we will not restore posts and threads.
If you have a question that is not covered here please respond to this thread, or if you would like to speak directly to our support team please submit a ticket. Please do not privately contact Minecraft Forum staff members to ask for your posts to be recovered.
As one of the 1 million affected users, I would like to note the following:
1 - The notification emails you sent out were sent to my old (now unused) email adress I used when joining the forums 6 years ago, not to the current email I provided to my Twitch account, which the forum uses now. This is the reason I did not notice the transfer right away until my threads and posts have been deleted. I still haven't recieved any information why you did it this way, but I'm pretty certain something went wrong here.
2 - I've never seen any pop-up appearing on the forums hinting the transition to Fandom. It is not completely out of question that add-block ate it, but that's still strange as it only blocks web elements that are explicitely marked as adds. I've seen all other pop-ups appearing in the past too, even the one telling people to transfer their forum accounts to Twitch. Why would exactly this one be supressed by add-block? (Also, please don't come with "why u not deactivate add block? blablabla ... I've cought malicious stuff through adds in the past, also at least 90% of adds on the internet are pure cancer, especially the ones with sound. Not even talking about how much faster websites load with add-block ... the MC forums are no exception here. I'm not turning it off, never again!)
So yeah, I was completely unaware this purge is happening. I totally understand the GDPR and it's not a bad law, but it requires every company to give people a clear option to consent or opt out of any kind of data usage or data transfer. I did not recieve this option in any proper way. I get the feeling there might have been a few mistakes on your side, or not? I mean, the transition to Twitch worked flawlessly ...
I'm sure I'm not the only one having years worth of forum posts deleted out of nowhere, so what do you guys think? Anyone else out there who recieved zero information before having his stuff deleted?
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Retired Staff1. I am sorry that this has happened. I cannot speak to the methodology through which we identified your contact address but I believe it was based on the email address we were sending all other contact to. There is the possibility that there was a forum bug (independent of this process) which incorrectly referenced your email address.
2. AdBlock and similar plugins work by identifying elements and scripts on a webpage it believes to be bad and interferes with them; from simply removing elements to blocking requests, there are a lot of different ways which these plugins can modify the behaviour of a website. The consent pop-up we used depended upon a consent service we operated within Curse but outside the Minecraft Forum and so it's possible that your browser plugin identified the system as bad by virtue of it being hosted on a separate domain and blocked it. This is, unfortunately, a risk you take when using a plugin like AdBlock.
The transition to Twitch ownership in 2016 did not involve any consent process, so it is not comparable, as there were no user facing changes. The transition into Twitch was before GDPR came into force, meaning that we did not need to seek consent from any users to transfer their data (in the same way we did not seek consent from non-EEA users during the Fandom transition).
To anyone who dislikes this,
MinecraftForum followed the correct procedures and if your account was removed, then something was wrong on either your end, or something out of peoples control. Please do not blame any certain person for this.
I'm not blaming anyone specific, I'm just trying to point out that something might, in fact, not have worked correctly here. Before deleting 1 million users and 10 million forum posts, you make absolutely sure everyone's aware of it. I doubt it is part of the correct procedure to send notifications to an obsolete email I used for my Curse account 6 years ago. I'm using Twitch to log-in into this forum. I did not recieve any information via the email adress provided to my Twitch account. If Curse is being bought by Fandom from Twitch, I would expect Twitch to inform me about this and how it affects me via the contact data I gave them. I got nothing. Otherwise we wouldn't have this problem in the first place.
It would just be interesting if anyone else had a similar surprise when checking his forum threads, and how easy it would be to restore the lost content from a server backup or something like that. Dunno. We'll see
Looking forward to updates on this ...
I have partially to agree with the above since a THIRD of all posts/threads have been removed (you can see how many there used to be here) - that is certainly not the result of a "few" users failing to get notifications but the vast majority of all EU users.
Granted, part of this is because a majority of members simply no longer use the forums and I doubt that most of them will ever return (if they are able to recover data at all by consenting), though I've seen a lot of members who were on relatively recently who were purged, and they could have at least done something to save old posts/threads, like just changing their names to something anonymous and clearing any information in their profiles (as was done).
This doesn't just affect the forums but everything that links to it, including using it as a source (for example, the Wiki has linked to forum threads documenting game behavior), and things like this are exactly why sites like the Internet Archive were created (you can't guarantee that anything posted online will remain forever), but you have to actually know the URLs to find them and not everything is archived (for example, you want to download some old mod but the download links do not work since they were not archived).
Also, the number of lost posts may be even greater than reported; I'm missing over 1600 posts, as listed here when compared to the post count stated at the top (512 pages * 15 per page = 7680 vs 9307), which seems to still count all of them (posts that were actually deleted by moderators do seem to detract from the total), and if that also applies to the overall count for the forums then around 3-4 million additional posts have effectively been removed (there isn't any reason why they can't be available in the member's profile but not link to a thread, similar to how the deleted usernames do not link to a profile).
TheMasterCaver's First World - possibly the most caved-out world in Minecraft history - includes world download.
TheMasterCaver's World - my own version of Minecraft largely based on my views of how the game should have evolved since 1.6.4.
Why do I still play in 1.6.4?
As I stated in the other thread, they could have just sent at least in forum PMs. Those had been received by any ACTIVE user.
So that is not on "our end", neither is this "out of peoples control". It's just sloppy.
As I also stated in the other thread, BEFORE deleting accounts and all posts, they could have deactivated them some time before the transfer was done. This also had pushed active users to follow the procedure (which the majority obviously didn't even know about now).
Yes, there's nothing to do about inactive users, but the damage caused could have been a way lower than it is now.
Beside this, I'm still not even sure, if it was even necessary to delete the forum contents at all, as to my understanding the whole law is about personal data. But that's another story and I'm no lawyer unfortunately.
But I still appreciate the effort being done now.
I agree that the System is flawed.
I don't live in Europe and never have been there. The poster states it only contacted people in Europe when i know my account was set to Australia and have never been to the European Union. Something went wrong on your end.
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Curse PremiumSince I am still able to visit my own threads that were deleted (OP shows as deleted) and see the replies in those threads of users whose account was not deleted, I know for a hard fact that the messages in these threads that were not explicitly deleted themselves.
As such, citricsquid, even if it turns out that deleted thread OPs and other messages can not be restored in the future, might you still pursue to make these deleted threads visible again? Or at least their non-deleted content?
If the system could not identify you as not living in the EU, you should have had the e-mails and pop-ups before your account was deleted. Even if you actually live in Australia.
Please understand that they had to make sure. That is how laws work.
@TheMasterCaver
Based on the % of pages that disappeared of Azanor's Thaumcraft thread, which is about 14% I would estimate that about 25% of all messages on the MC forums (0,14 + (1 - 0,14) * 0,14) got either deleted directly, or hidden in deleted threads. I don't know where you get your "third of all posts/threads," but extrapolation says that it isn't quite as bad as you state, so I'd like to hear your reasoning.
@everyone who cares to listen to my rant:
Fandom... I am a member of +- 60 pretty active Minecraft related Discords and not once have I heard about the sale/change of ownership of these forums to Fandom before my account was deleted.
When I joined these forums they were a great place to meet new people, get valuable information about Minecraft and modding and joke around.
I am sad to see this forum decline in this way. And it seems like it's not slowing down either. It's speeding up.
The less the forum is useful to its users, the less it is worth to the owner, the more likely they are to sell or get rid of it, the less useful it becomes to its users. It's a vicious cycle and there is no stopping it.
At the current rate, I wonder if these forums will even exist anymore in 5 years...
Can we just archive it the way it is, so it can not get any worse?
If you're new to troubleshooting Minecraft Crashes, or just interested, please read my guide on reading crash reports and reporting crashes.
"I let people see how horrendous my code is specifically so it can become less bad." ~ Spirit 2018-10-18
" ~ Vadis365 2016-09-09
"Never, ever, EVER give a maid a bazooka..." ~ CaerMaster 2018-02-10
"When in doubt read Zsashas' Signature
"Your post count reflects your uncertainty more than it does your knowledge." ~ Me
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Retired StaffFor clarity: the situation is that posts have been soft deleted and while there is no technical reason we cannot restore posts, it is effectively impossible for us to restore them because we do not have any tools available, and doing it post by post by hand would take hundreds of moderator hours, potentially thousands depending on the reclamation rate. I am not willing to commit the forum staff to that, I think it would be deeply unfair to expect volunteers to perform that task.
The intention is for an automated process to be built and launched -- that's what the form is for expressing an interest in -- but I cannot guarantee that will happen due to the resources required. Realistically, if that process is launched then we expect to see full recovery of all posts belonging to reclaimed users, if that process isn't launched then I do not expect to see the majority of posts restored.
I have let moderators make a decision on an individual basis if they wish to restore posts of reclaimed users, however I haven't publicised this in the announcement because I don't wish moderators to be inundated with requests.
Pretty simple:
That's taken from the bottom of the main forum page. Here are the same numbers taken from an archived copy on the Wayback Machine, dated 1/10/2019:
19,922,321 / 29,600,977 = 0.673, or 32.7% of posts deleted. The loss isn't as bad, around 25%, for threads/views, but that may just be because more popular threads weren't affected as much relative to all threads. Also, as mentioned before, it may not accurately be counting all deleted posts; many users, not just myself, are shown to have made more posts than are actually shown on their profile page.
Also, even prior to this many of the more popular subforums lost posts over the past year or so; for example, Survival Mode had 1,203,348 posts on the 10th, while it had 1,205,090 on 10/12/2017 (here is a list I made of activity over the years; since 2017 you can't even use this anymore to measure activity. Many other subforums also saw losses).
I also find the decrease in activity over the years to be bizarre given that the forums have continued to gain members at a healthy rate, even if not as high as it used to be - more than 100,000 over the past year (none appear to actually have been removed from the member count given on the main page; if anything, there has been a recent surge in new members, 26,000 over the past week, possibly due to deleted members re-registering with new accounts, which still leaves a gain of nearly 100,000 before then).
TheMasterCaver's First World - possibly the most caved-out world in Minecraft history - includes world download.
TheMasterCaver's World - my own version of Minecraft largely based on my views of how the game should have evolved since 1.6.4.
Why do I still play in 1.6.4?
My old account had not previously been connected to a twitch account, and the sign in page doesn't accept any login except one from Twitch. How can I gain access to my old account? My previous account was capSAR273, and still exists, but I have no way to log in to it.
I understand that you need to remove poster's personal information when they can't be contacted, but why is the content of threads being removed?
Many of these threads are linked to from other sources (like the wiki etc) and contain historically important information about projects, mods and utilities used over the years on Minecraft.
The content of threads is not private information - it is publicly posted information. I think you need to speak to your lawyers again regarding content versus personal data as it seems there's been a misunderstanding of the task at hand.
Wouldn't it be better to hang posts on anonymised pseudo users, and remove all the account records? You guys are also custodians of history, not just a forum.
Exactly.
Further it is weird, that threads/Posts have been deleted - but profile pictures not.
Profile pics are much more of "personal data" (especially when it's a rl pic).
Even if not visible in public, it still has been there, which means, it must have been still somewhere in your database.
Not that I'd be personally disturbed by that, just the whole thing doesn't follow any logic.
While GDPR compliance may well have necessitated the removal of posts by residents of GDPR recognizing countries whose affirmative opt-in could not be obtained, the wholesale removal of many other posts (not, unfortunately, falling under GDPR protections) is most regrettable.
It is to be hopped that the posts requiring removal can be nulled and access to the other posts in the threads restored in sort order.
Failure to do so will consign a number of carefully reasoned and helpful posts to the memory hole.
It will also encourage replys that 'reinvent the wheel' as it is no longer viable to simply link to a previous discussion covering a point.
This will be particularly unpleasant with regards to any topic likely to generate controversy: linking to a multipage discussion of an issue from some time ago is unlikely to inspire 'flamish' replys; restating the relevant arguments [even if done as even handledly as possible], much more so.
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Retired StaffI cannot speak to reasoning behind the decisions made by Amazon's lawyers as I am not a legal professional, however I am confident in the decisions they have made. Given the high stakes (just today Google was fined €50,000,000 for GDPR violations) it is understandable that they would exercise caution.
I appreciate that this is deeply unfortunate and has far reaching consequences for the community but it was determined to be the right course of action to comply with our legal obligations. This forum has been my entire career, for the last decade I have watched the forum grow post by post and it is very sad to see so much of the history wiped out. I would love for there to be a way to save the history but our legal obligations come first.
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Curse PremiumProfile pictures have been deleted, but not necessarily at the same time as other content/info linked to an account.
I have my own account as an example of this.
If you're new to troubleshooting Minecraft Crashes, or just interested, please read my guide on reading crash reports and reporting crashes.
"I let people see how horrendous my code is specifically so it can become less bad." ~ Spirit 2018-10-18
" ~ Vadis365 2016-09-09
"Never, ever, EVER give a maid a bazooka..." ~ CaerMaster 2018-02-10
"When in doubt read Zsashas' Signature
"Your post count reflects your uncertainty more than it does your knowledge." ~ Me
I had 2 profile pictures uploaded, one of them was deleted, the other not.
As one was deleted it used forceful the other.
I can't believe so much good info was lost. I can't stop finding broken links all with info I need to find.
Nothing deters people from using a forum more than having to re-register several times because of "acquisitions" and having threads lost than this.
Why doesn't Minecraft simply host their own forum instead of having several transfers? I can honestly say, if I need to register again, I will simply not peruse the forum anymore as it's not worth the hassle.