So the site was down from late night Tuesday 30th August till around noon on Thursday 1st September, but what happened to all the posts made after Cúmhaí's on August 12th at 3:30 pm till the site went down? They've disappeared.

I don't know. I've sent Breandán an email.

Hi, I've looked into it and can't see any signs of intentional deletion, so there are no rogue agents or hackers that I can see (at least not from inside the forum itself.)

It is forum policy not to delete posts or threads other than spam. Even if a poster requests that a thread be deleted for personal or other reasons, it is our preference to anonymise the entries rather than delete them and thus lose other people's hard work that might help other learners to understand Irish better.

My best guess is that when the database was "repaired", the repairs involved entries that were perhaps corrupted as early as 13 August 2016 and these were excised/erased. The database repair program is automatic so we have no control over this. Perhaps the "doctor" (program) felt that the infected limb had to be amputated further up to save the body. We may never know.

I'm sorry I can't offer a better explanation than that. Thank you for being vigilant and bringing this to our attention. Please let me know if you notice any other anomalies or suspicious activity around the forums, because if there are deletions occurring intentionally, we do need to get onto it as soon as possible.

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Múinteoir Gaeilge - Irish Teacher
My "specialty" is Connemara Irish, particularly Cois Fhairrge dialect, but I can also speak Ulster and Munster Irish with native-level pronunciation.
Is fearr Gaeilge ḃriste ná Béarla cliste, cinnte, aċ i ḃfad níos fearr aríst í Gaeilge ḃinn ḃeo na nGaeltaċtaí.
Gaeilge Chonnacht (GC), go háraid Gaeilge Chois Fhairrge (GCF), Gaeilic Uladh (GU), Gaelainn na Mumhan (GM), agus Gaeilge an Chaighdeáin Oifigiúil (CO).

Recently Bríd Mhór sent me a private message, to which I made a reply - both have disappeared. It's not important, but it did make me wonder about what had happened to them.

Cúmhaí sent me a PM too, and I replied. Then it disappeared. I thought it strange that Cúmhaí would delete it, but now I see that he probably didn't and it's a forum error.

I hope it isn’t my fault.

I had edited a post of mine twice and the very next moment as I had pressed the "submit" button - oops - the forum was down.

To be honest, that was my guess. That the last backup on the DB had been made before that, and something serious happened so they had to go back to it. Unfortunate, but shit happens.

Update: I have received a letter from the ISP saying the entire server had crashed on 31 August and reverted to a snapshot from 12 August. (galaxyrocker was right.)

They offered me two options:

1. To receive a zip file with the data from 12 to 31 August that they recovered .

2. To restore the data they have from 31 August. This might get back the data lost from 12 to 31 August, but it could also be corrupt and we'd lose it all again. We would also lose the newer data from 1 September onwards.

I've asked for option 1. I will see what they give me and work out if I can salvage some of it.

Sorry for the inconvenience, folks.


It's a possibility, a Labhráis - your posts are certainly very potent. Please don't let it deter you from posting more in future.

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Múinteoir Gaeilge - Irish Teacher
My "specialty" is Connemara Irish, particularly Cois Fhairrge dialect, but I can also speak Ulster and Munster Irish with native-level pronunciation.
Is fearr Gaeilge ḃriste ná Béarla cliste, cinnte, aċ i ḃfad níos fearr aríst í Gaeilge ḃinn ḃeo na nGaeltaċtaí.
Gaeilge Chonnacht (GC), go háraid Gaeilge Chois Fhairrge (GCF), Gaeilic Uladh (GU), Gaelainn na Mumhan (GM), agus Gaeilge an Chaighdeáin Oifigiúil (CO).

I was going to ask "Who's this Breandán guy?" till I saw his reply. Vaguely remember him now.

Agus ós ag caint ar "absentees" mé, cár imigh Saoirse?

Bhuel, nach tusa an strainséoir mór annso !