So, already people have noticed that account comment notices are being wiped out en masse. Some of mine are gone, too. While I don't run this place and have no access to the code, I can explain what's going on, and why the admins (as usual) are doing things wrong. Not like they've ever listened to me before, or anyone ever listens to me, but... you know how I am. I'm a tech cynic and a professional complainer.

Anyway, they're just using a naïve approach of deleting notifications older than a specific date. You know, like a lot of web sites do these days. They just didn't bother to give us a warning first. Inkbunny also started doing this years ago, much to my annoyance. Something about clearing out the database and trying to make it faster and more efficient to improve your user experience or blah blah whatever.

That's the wrong approach. I've already told them that's the wrong approach in one of the community journal updates.

The correct thing to do is keep a cached count of all messages per account, and use a scheduler to search for accounts with excessively high message counts, and then cull old messages ONLY from those "problem" accounts. The rationale is not to nuke everyone's data, but to actually work the problem. If someone has only 2 notifications (as I did) then that account is obviously not a problem. If someone has 14,000 notifications, then purge any messages on that account older than 6 months. It's clear the account owner isn't checking messages, so... screw 'em.

This policy would accomplish the goal of trimming the database of 90%+ of cruft while allowing sane people to keep their old messages without interference.

But, hey, it's far easier to be dumb and just delete everything. You know, like how DeviantArt just decided to kill off the note system with no warning. Any day now, it's likely that your old notes, journals, and other data will just vanish, too, so... be sure to copy/paste anything to a local file on your desktop. Remember that anything online can disappear in a heartbeat for no reason.

Oh, and that's on top of the fact that they still don't send notifications when people change their display names, or allow you to NOT receive journal notifications from chronic YCH spammers. We wouldn't want features that actually make sense, of course. I also can't believe that the cache counts aren't synced on a scheduler, either, which is why my notification numbers have been wrong for literally years. No, I do not "nuke" my messages, because using that to reset cache counts is NOT a solution. They need to fix that bug properly, not just take the typical easy way out and blame the end user.

I swear, all web developers are idiots. That's why I don't work in this business anymore. The admins better not justify this by claiming, "We didn't have a choice. This was absolutely necessary to optimize performance." I know that's coming, but it's still total BS. You fix problems by thinking, not just nuking from orbit.

Anyway... back to my usual grind of bitching about the stupidity of Linux problems on other tech forums. Not like anyone listens to me over there, either.