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MNHQ

The Royal Family Topic Disappearance

57 replies

MattTech · 10/01/2023 18:00

Hi all...

I wanted to post about the problems we experienced last night with "The Royal Family" topic disappearing.

Unfortunately, we had a bug that meant, under a very specific set of circumstances, topics could get deleted, along with all of the threads and replies in those topics - this is what happened last night. Luckily, we were able to get a fix in place pretty quickly that reinstated all threads and another fix to restore posting ability by 9pm last night so we hope that you weren't too badly impacted by the outage.

Contrary to some of the theories, we weren't taken down by men in grey from the palace, nor was it a hacking attempt. In short, we had a bug in our code for our new follow topics feature that broke something else - a cock up, not a conspiracy.

We're really sorry that this happened, and I wanted to personally reassure everyone that we've investigated this in depth internally today to ensure that a problem like this doesn't happen again.

Thanks

Matt
Mumsnet Tech Team

OP posts:
Villagetoraiseachild · 10/01/2023 18:24

Well, drama over then.....
Technically.....

MNHQ
MattTech · 10/01/2023 18:17

PlaitBilledDuckyPuss · 10/01/2023 18:10

Hello Matt, how come you are @MattTech not 'MattMumsnet'?

Hi @PlaitBilledDuckyPuss

As @TightFistedWozerk says, the tech team have Tech instead of Mumsnet at the end of their usernames 😃

OP posts:
MNHQ
MattTech · 10/01/2023 18:16

MrsDanversGlidesAgain · 10/01/2023 18:07

What were those 'specific set of circumstances'? I find it a bit odd that that was the only board it affected.

Hi @MrsDanversGlidesAgain

The bug was related to our new follow topics feature. The sequence of events that led to the deletion happened with an account that was only following a single topic - which just happened to be The Royal Family topic.

OP posts:
TightFistedWozerk · 10/01/2023 18:14

PlaitBilledDuckyPuss · 10/01/2023 18:10

Hello Matt, how come you are @MattTech not 'MattMumsnet'?

Tech team have Tech names.

PlaitBilledDuckyPuss · 10/01/2023 18:10

Hello Matt, how come you are @MattTech not 'MattMumsnet'?

MrsDanversGlidesAgain · 10/01/2023 18:07

What were those 'specific set of circumstances'? I find it a bit odd that that was the only board it affected.

watcherintherye · 10/01/2023 18:06

Unfortunately, we had a bug that meant, under a very specific set of circumstances, topics could get deleted, along with all of the threads and replies in those topics

Were the very specific set of circumstances in this case 'anything mentioning Harry, Meghan or the Royal Family'? Grin