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MNHQ

The Royal Family Topic Disappearance

14 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

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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.

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 😃

MNHQ

MattTech · 10/01/2023 19:01

ArcaneWireless · 10/01/2023 18:45

Thank you Matt

Any idea yet about the blank emails sent earlier today?

You’re welcome @ArcaneWireless!

We’re still looking into it. There was an issue at our email service provider earlier but we’re still investigating what exactly happened over there.

We’ll let you know as soon as we know for sure 🙂

MNHQ

MattTech · 10/01/2023 19:02

TightFistedWozerk · 10/01/2023 18:48

oopps forgot to say thank you Matt, where are my manners Blush.

You’re more than welcome @TightFistedWozerk

MNHQ

MattTech · 10/01/2023 19:04

bitoffrostbitethere · 10/01/2023 18:49

Hi@MattTech, nice to meet you!

Hi @bitoffrostbitethere! Nice to meet you too 🙂

MNHQ

MattTech · 10/01/2023 19:57

Cismyfatarse · 10/01/2023 19:47

I still can't find the topic @MattTech only read threads that appear in Active. The topic does not appear in the list for me. (iPhone, using the app).

Hi @Cismyfatarse

If you log out of the app and back in again that should resolve the problem for you in the app.

When the app loads, it caches the list of topics. What is likely to have happened is that you loaded it when the topic was deleted and it’s not picked up that it’s back.

Logging out and in again will force it to reload the list of topics.

Hope that helps! 🙂

MNHQ

MattTech · 10/01/2023 20:00

ArcaneWireless · 10/01/2023 18:45

Thank you Matt

Any idea yet about the blank emails sent earlier today?

Hi @ArcaneWireless

I’ve confirmed that this was indeed a problem at our email provider’s end.

They had a problem over there today that delayed sending some emails, and when they processed the backlog they sent out some blank emails.

They’ve fixed the issue now so everything should be back to normal 🙂

Thanks

MNHQ

MattTech · 10/01/2023 20:05

tabulahrasa · 10/01/2023 19:57

wildly misinterprets with no real tech knowledge at all

So.... what you’re saying is, one account was keeping that board going?... 😂

Show quote history

😂

That’s not exactly what I’m saying… But the bug could have caused a lot more disruption than it did!

Thankfully we have a very robust backup setup and disaster recovery plan in place that helped to restore the content as soon as we were alerted that it had gone 🙂

MNHQ

MattTech · 10/01/2023 20:35

Cismyfatarse · 10/01/2023 20:10

@MattTech I did that. No change.

@Cismyfatarse That does seem strange. I can see it in the iOS app.

I’m away from a computer at the moment so can’t check at my end, but have you by any chance hidden the topic on either the web site or mobile web?

MNHQ

MattTech · 10/01/2023 21:05

LangClegsInSpace · 10/01/2023 20:36

Aww c'mon Matt, we all know the mod team bunged you a tenner to just switch it off for a bit 😂

😂 I can neither confirm or deny if that was the case!

If they had I might have asked them to do it during normal working hours though! 🤣

MNHQ

MattTech · 10/01/2023 22:02

whatadoodledo · 10/01/2023 21:46

@MattTech I want to steal you to join my tech team purely for your lovely customer management! (I'm sure you've got a great skill set to match)

☺️ What a lovely thing to say! Thank you so much!

MNHQ

MattTech · 11/01/2023 12:15

Cismyfatarse · 11/01/2023 07:21

@MattTech It has reappeared while I sleep. I hope you weren't up too late fixing it.

Excellent! I'm so glad that's all fixed now 😃Please let me know if you have any more problems.

MNHQ

YetAnotherBeckyMumsnet · 12/01/2023 22:19

Hi all - we're looking into this now. You can still access the topic at https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/theroyall_family but for some reason it's not showing on the topics list.

MNHQ

MattTech · 13/01/2023 08:51

@atteatimeeverybodyagrees @Thechoccieorange @Circleoffifths I'm really sorry about that.

It looks like there was an issue when the topic was restored that prevented it from showing in the list of talk topics. It was on site, but missing from the list.

It should be back in the list on the talk homepage now, and we'll get everything back into search today.

Watch this thread for updates

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