[hahn181]

Hey guys,

I am posting this, that maybe some of my work was not done for nothing.

I was able to recover lot of data including an Userlist including the Database UserId and Full reputationlist for them.

I sent everything to the admin team some days ago and nobody cares. 
It is all prepared as an nearly import ready csv file (with phpmyadmin for example).

How that was possible? Well I am an IT specialist with lot of training in file recovery and data science. 
Maybe some of you know the Website "Wayback Machine". A huge internetpage cache. 
It cached quite a few pages of cartechnology before the hack. 

So I pulled every available Site with powershell and saved it on my disk. 
Afterwards I "crawled" all the Files with powershell and used Regular Expression to find the interesting data. 

I then just had to export it as csv formatted data.

It than can be watched in Excel for example which looks like this:



In the link attached, you can find all I could find. Including hundreds of threads.

cheers

[Clusters]

Hate to tell you, all of that is pretty useless except for reference, but thanks for trying.

It would not help to restore anything.

[hahn181]

do you know something about databases?

The user community-system "mybb" based on mysql DB.
You can use phpmyadmin to view and edit the databases.

To restore the reputationscore for example you just need to import the csv and match the UID with reputation databasefield. (UID = ID of user databasetable)

Maybe I didnt make that clear enough. I am always thinking on an "raw" system based level. Far beyond "admin-backends".

And dont forget the included css files and design-template files. every "colorchange" made after 2019 is in there. Template and designwork can take large amount of time.

So dont call it "useless". anyway its by far not everything that is possible.

[Clusters]

Reputation is counted from individual users. Missing users, no rep. Even if you edited the reputation DB, the next time the DB is optimized the rep from missing users would be deleted. A lot of reputation was lost here when inactive accounts were deleted.

Restoring any posts from your data is useless because the attachments would be missing.

Restoring user accounts would be useless, because the corresponding email address and password would be missing so they would be dead accounts that are inaccessible.

Do we need a bunch of dead threads and users? No.

[hahn181]

one last thing to this:

After loss of data the goal is to minimize the impact. Right? 
So many users asking for the rep-score they had before.

I did not say that I provide data which will fully restore something.

But focused on the rep-score it is possible to bring back the old score sucessfully.

As you said, when there is an missing user it will be deleted after optimizing. 
But if you look at the reputation DB. This will only be the case if the ID in the "adduid" field is wrong or not "there" anymore.

How to avoid this? 

Easy: 

You create an new user. Lets call him "RecoveredData" and note the UID the new user gehts. In my example its uid 5. So UID=1 is user "Proofington". 

The reputation I restored sets the amount of reputation. 

The database looks like (attachment 1)


and the effect is (attachment 2)


With that knowladge your told reputation loss when optimizing would be completely without impact, if you make an sql call to list any RID where "adduid" is not valid ID from users table... replace it with the "RecoveredData" user. than it will not be deleted. 

and again: not useless (its always a question what you want to archive)

[Node]

While I would also like to get reps back, I feel it would be wrong in relation to users who registered after this backup and were totally lost. Your method will not be able to restore their rep because the accounts were lost and no way to prove a new user with the same nick is actually the same as an old one.

So IMHO this kind of "restoration" (I really hate to call this proposal by this word) would not be fair to many users and would create more mess than it solves.

We have just need to live with it. If rep was earned honestly, it will be no problem to earn it again easily. If egos were hurt, well, I hope not everyone's egos are that big

P.S. I'm NOT in any way related to this forum other than it's user.

[maxxsp]

In my opinion rep isn't important, can earn it again. What is important is the data and information that has been lost and cannot be recovered...

[loki954]

just a question.... if i have 1000 rep point for a post that is from year 2021 and the back up is from 2019. how can i get this rep points for a post that don't exist

i think the admins know what they are doing if was possible they would restore it all. 

My opinion that this is better what happen. now the forum is "cleaner" all important thread are in process of restoring. there was many thread that ware not supported or double/triple or not active....now all is clean and shiny !!!! the bad thing is that the admin have no sleep....

you can restore your rep point by your self if you are helping enough

[ROD-BENDERS]

I agree Loki 

The forum now has fresh links to stuff that is worth keeping... I lost a lot thnks rep but I dont care the forum is more organised 

[hahn181]

just a question.... if i have 1000 rep point for a post that is from year 2021 and the back up is from 2019. how can i get this rep points for a post that don't exist

i think the admins know what they are doing if was possible they would restore it all. 

My opinion that this is better what happen. now the forum is "cleaner" all important thread are in process of restoring. there was many thread that ware not supported or double/triple or not active....now all is clean and shiny !!!! the bad thing is that the admin have no sleep....

you can restore your rep point by your self if you are helping enough

you didn't understand where the data is coming from. to bring a bit light into the dark just look for example here:

https://web.archive.org/web/202103272048...ogy.co.uk/

here you can see every snapshot that exist for this site:

https://web.archive.org/web/*/https://ca...ogy.co.uk/


i personally dont care about thanks or rep. I just wanted to point, that there is an way to get things back because so many cried about the lost rep. 

(and to proof that it is indeed possible to recreate such things against that what clusters said.) 

anyway, I offered my help thats all I wanted. Contribution is always better than just leech stuff and care about nothing