and the crappy week award goes to bandflesh

Wow. Gakked from giddygeek:

Bandflesh on Journalfen was deleted, not the entire community, just all the posts, which pretty much amounts to the same thing. And apparently the gmail account as well? (Please correct me if I'm wrong.)

That sucks. My sympathies to the bandfleshers on my flist and everyone else affected. I had a mod once who deleted a two year old community I was very active in, and also the only one for that pairing at that time, and I'm still pissed how much we lost in history and list culture and memories. It's irreplaceable. I'm sorry for your loss, especially for those of you who were there to watch it happen in real time and be unable to do anything. I know you'll come back from this, but right now, it's painful to think about what's gone.

ETA: Context:

Because I keep leaving basically the same comment everywhere. by giddygeek

Also here by loveyouallwrong and here by lovinspike247

ETA 2: To clarify what was lost here (yes, my anger's escalating the more I think and read on this), from an email I just received:

Eighteen months, over 600,000 comments, deleted piece by piece while the members watched in real time unable to stop it. That's horrific.

Comments

[robotjen.livejournal.com]

I had a mod once who deleted a two year old community I was very active in

No matter how much time passes, that will never not be ridiculous.

[seperis.livejournal.com]

No joke. That still makes me angry. I saved messages, but I didn't the entire damn comm. Which is why I became *really* obsessive in later MLs just in case, until livejournal saved my inbox.

[ladyholder.livejournal.com]

Well that is just insane... And would the wayback machine have any of it saved?

~L

[seperis.livejournal.com]

One of them said she had all comments/etc forwarded to an email, so they probably have the bulk. Just putting it in context and etc will be the problem. Plus the massive trustfail of one of the members doing that.

[seperis.livejournal.com]

I'm seriously having rage flashbacks from when that comm I was on was deleted. Gah. I hate when this happens.

[everysecondtues.livejournal.com]

Oh, wow, that is all kinds of terrible. Even if I wanted to leave a fandom or was sick of the work or whatever, I would hand it off to someone else. Just, even if your attitude is "Imma take my toys and go," that doesn't mean you ought to break everyone else's on your way out. Damn.

[seperis.livejournal.com]

Well, it was an anon comm, so everyone had the passwords to post and whatever. It was just someone who joined up and maliciously deleted everything and then got the email account. Just as bad, in my opinion, if not worse.

Eighteen months lost. That just sucks.

[mecurtin.livejournal.com]

what the what?

Can someone point me to, like, an explanation?!?

[ladyholder.livejournal.com]

Someone with the mental age of 2 screaming "My toys!" at the top of their lungs?

~L

[seperis.livejournal.com]

Um, what I've gathered? One of the members went through and deleted all the posts for the comm and took over their email. The comm gave the main password to everyone because it was an anonymous group, like lol_meme.

It sucks for them a lot.

[(Anonymous)]

hey, do you think you could remove the link to bandflesh please? we'd prefer it if the community wasn't linked everywhere.

[seperis.livejournal.com]

I just saw that comment there and came back to remove. Removing now.

[ratcreature]

Another reason why more people should know about and use backup scripts to archive communities with their comments. I mean, it is horrible, but if the community was set up by design so that members could potentially do vandalism because of the anon thing, precautions are even more important.

[morgandawn.livejournal.com]

I know of LJ Archive - which only backs up the posts not the comments. I am always looking for scripts/software that will allow us to back up comments if we're not the moderators.

[giddygeek.livejournal.com]

I've just been thinking about it all day. That's truly a TON of bandom's history--things were posted there first, then leaked the general community, stories were recced and prompted and written there, and so much of it is just totally gone.

And it's like, with Fanlore and everything happening right now, it keeps hitting me how important a fandom's past always is. This feels not just like a crime, so to speak, against bandflesh or even bandom. It's a horrible thing to have done to fandom.

[seperis.livejournal.com]

This. All that history and discussion and intercomm meme are just gone. I get sick thinking about it.

[anatsuno.livejournal.com]

Arg. There could have been an LJ-Archive save of it! SADNESS. Seriously, someone in a RPG I was in once deleted 5 or 7 characters and ALL THE COMMENTS these had left in any posts of the comm/game, and I'm still traumatized years later.

Is there a way that Robin and Zorro can restore a backed-up version? Isn't there a daily backup of the whole of JF or somesuch? *crosses fingers very tightly*

[seperis.livejournal.com]

I hope so. That was so much to lose; hopefully there's some way to get it back.

[drunktuesdays.livejournal.com]

Thanks for the support. It means a lot to have people back us up. ♥

[seperis.livejournal.com]

Aogain, so sorry for what happened. Losing history like that is--I seriously cannot imagine having to watch. I just can't.

[impertinence.livejournal.com]

Thanks for this. More than anything it's just the knowledge that the whole evolution of a massive part of our fandom lives is gone.

[seperis.livejournal.com]

*winces* it just gets worse the more I think about it.

[just-katarin.livejournal.com]

What you've said here about the fandom history that's been lost is bang-on. Because that as well as our sense of community is what we're really going to miss. (well and the fics and ridiculous manips and so forth)

[mardia.livejournal.com]

Oh my GOD. I mean, I'm not even in that fandom whatsoever, but the sheer malice it takes to do that--how petty and small of a person do you have to be to pull something like this?

Is there any chance that the posts/comments can be restored?

[janedavitt.livejournal.com]

God, that's just sick. How can people do this? Both in the literal sense and from an ethical standpoint? As you say, that's data lost that can never be retrieved. The historian in me is horrified.

Does LJ itself have no back up that could help?

I'm not tech enough to know how this... this sabotage is possible but it's very scary.

[kyizi.livejournal.com]

Yeah, we've lost shoebox_project as well and that just sucks, so I sympathise with all the people on that com.

[pir8fancier.livejournal.com]

Yes, I had that happen but it was the moderator who did it. There was some talk of disbanding the site, but none of us realized that should would just take it down. We thought it would be locked and left up. Nope, she just deleted it completely. This site was really what got me into fandom and I'm personal friends with many people that I met through that site. I wrote some amazing meta on that site that just went poof. It was, um, stroke-inducing.

[bluefuzzyelf.livejournal.com]

Oh, Jesus. I really hope they find who did it.

[lurkerlynne.livejournal.com]

I admit I haven't read all the comments and know nothing of that comm, but is it possible to retrieve anything from the Internet Wayback Machine?

There's a special hell for people who do things like that. And if they're lucky, the people responsible will get there before the victims find them.