I've tagged the team on this issue (being unable to post) again.
Any update? It's been 40 days now that my main account has been effectively banned from forums/PMs due to a system glitch.
It’s beginning to seem intentional at this point since it has only affecting a handful of accounts.
It's hard to not think so. The issue is clear, it messed up some post dates and even deleting the posts doesn't resolve because we can't fully delete them - they remain on record for mods to see. So whenever we try to post or PM it checks the date and time of our most recent post in log - whether deleted or not - and if too soon it prevents posting. It's a method of avoiding spam.
The solution is just running an SQL query so any post with a date/time greater than current date/time has the date/time set to 1 minute ago. The anti-spam method no longer blocks the posts and the problem is resolved.
It's obvious. It's easy. I've done it before, on a forum that had the same issue. A few mins writing the query, press a button to run and a few seconds later the issue is gone.
There is no justifiable excuse for it taking so long.
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This is the test account of Cyb3rM1nd. Posting through this because my main account is locked out of forums due to a glitch.
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I've tagged the team on this issue (being unable to post) again.
Any update? It's been 40 days now that my main account has been effectively banned from forums/PMs due to a system glitch.
It’s beginning to seem intentional at this point since it has only affecting a handful of accounts.
It's hard to not think so. The issue is clear, it messed up some post dates and even deleting the posts doesn't resolve because we can't fully delete them - they remain on record for mods to see. So whenever we try to post or PM it checks the date and time of our most recent post in log - whether deleted or not - and if too soon it prevents posting. It's a method of avoiding spam.
The solution is just running an SQL query so any post with a date/time greater than current date/time has the date/time set to 1 minute ago. The anti-spam method no longer blocks the posts and the problem is resolved.
It's obvious. It's easy. I've done it before, on a forum that had the same issue. A few mins writing the query, press a button to run and a few seconds later the issue is gone.
There is no justifiable excuse for it taking so long.
It seems kinda like “quiet quitting,” only more like “quiet firing” and against forum users.
Aye, it's very hard to not be suspicious at this point. There are others who have noticied how sus this is, and I've known them to do shadow-ban tactics before. I would like to be hopeful - but the longer it goes on the harder it becomes to not feel like this is something deliberate.
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This is the test account of Cyb3rM1nd. Posting through this because my main account is locked out of forums due to a glitch.
Click ✨ HERE ✨ For My Youtube Videos featuring Guides, Tips & Tricks for using D&D Beyond. Need help with Homebrew? Check out ✨ thisFAQ/Guide thread ✨ by IamSposta.
If that is the case I really have to ask what logic they are using to shadowban people. I don't even use the forums to discuss the games or the company any more, just rp in the off topic threads, same as another user suffering the same thing. Why shadowban us?
I don't think they're intentionally shadowbanning accounts. I suspect:
1) They are incredibly, embarrassingly, irresponsibly short-staffed in Tech Support / Customer Service. Surely they must know that they are losing a lot of business because of this. We can only imagine what a chaotic mess it must be on their side of the curtain. I don't have a lot of sympathy – they need to fix it.
2) These forums are at the absolute bottom of their priority list. That much is clear. They are neither supported nor monitored except by bots and volunteers. No D&D Beyond or Wizards employee will ever read this thread.
My biggest fear is that they will announce they are retiring the entire dndbeyond forum and messaging system altogether. That would suck.
...Or, do you suppose everything will magically start up again at 2:09am on Dec. 18?
...Or, do you suppose everything will magically start up again at 2:09am on Dec. 18?
It likely will.
I don't think they're deliberately shadowbanning anyone. It'd be a very silly way to do it, for one.
It's more likely a combination of the forums being low-priority, the fact that it ought to fix itself not too far in the future, and doing raw operations on the database is likely not a power granted to most of staff, and they may be unwilling to do it on a live DB. (And they may not be wrong to think that. I can't think of how it could break things*, but I'm not a DB person, and I don't know what kind of house of cards the forum software is.)
It's still not great, particularly the lack of communication with the affected people.
* Except by screwing up the command, which must enter one's calculations for this kind of thing.
2) These forums are at the absolute bottom of their priority list. That much is clear. They are neither supported nor monitored except by bots and volunteers. No D&D Beyond or Wizards employee will ever read this thread.
This is actually wrong on no WotC employee reading the thread.
2) These forums are at the absolute bottom of their priority list. That much is clear. They are neither supported nor monitored except by bots and volunteers. No D&D Beyond or Wizards employee will ever read this thread.
This is actually wrong on no WotC employee reading the thread.
What a funky glitch, and not in the cool '70s way. I've brought it to the team's attention!
But I can agree with jl8e's comment on there not being much communication about the issue.
I am curious as to how many accounts that were effected are active and how many are abandoned?
Your last post showed 1,600+ accounts affected, and a good number seem to still remain affected by the glitch and or possible suspension of service.
The user I communicate with has their main account blocked, and it’s been reported and ticketed.
but the response has been more on it being a user side issue than a problem on the server side, and they fear that by responding to the email, the ticket has been pushed further back.
if one looks at the timings of when the sites staff have remarked on this, and the remarks of a Moderator and it appears that it took staff member almost a month to inform the team’s attention, and if that is any indication of how concerned the site’s administrators about this, then the team has made this a low priority task.
I guess what I am asking is, why is something like this occurring and why do some feel like this is deliberate?
Edit: The post by LaTiaJacquise was unusual because the reference to a Y2K type of glitch and because by this day and age that type of thing is a near absolute improbability, a stray random high energy particle can cause a single bit to flip and cause weird effects and this would have had to be one hell of a major coincidence and most computer systems have had some measure of updates to address this.
" Darkvision doesn’t work in Magical darkness, and if something is magical, Never Trust it acts the same way as a non-magical version of that same thing!”- Discotech Mage over a cup of joe.
I am curious as to how many accounts that were effected are active and how many are abandoned?
Your last post showed 1,600+ accounts affected, and a good number seem to still remain affected by the glitch and or possible suspension of service.
I'd assume all of them were active, but most of them aren't forum posters.
I guess what I am asking is, why is something like this occurring and why do some feel like this is deliberate?
Edit: The post by LaTiaJacquise was unusual because the reference to a Y2K type of glitch and because by this day and age that type of thing is a near absolute improbability, a stray random high energy particle can cause a single bit to flip and cause weird effects and this would have had to be one hell of a major coincidence and most computer systems have had some measure of updates to address this.
It's way more likely than that. What probably happened is that one of the servers got its clock messed up. There are any number of reasons that could happen; software bugs and configuration errors are by far the most likely. (It was probably the cause of notifications getting broken as well, since they happened at the same time AFAIK.)
Anyone who accessed the forums during the time between then and when it was caught has their access time set in the future. And, while they probably can fix it by doing direct modifications to the DB, see my previous post.
Wait if what I gather from your comment is correct , the people affected should just sit and wait around for several months to see if a decision that effects a large number of users clears up?
Why doesn’t the staff and management who have seen this problem and posted they are working on it, actually fix the issue?
Maybe because the company has done so much to piss off a good number of users to the point where the people running this place have lost a fair number of users and when the changes to the app were made, the company used that to help reduce the number of people complaining and boost the number of users who are constantly logged in.
sounds like excuses are being made to NOT fix the problem, and it sounds like the company is intentionally ignoring the complaints of its customers that don’t agree with their methods of service.
it sets a very bad and ugly precedent that this company will only care as long as your acting or posting praise for the new like a good little mindless slave and its pathetic to watch.
Dude, it's not about you. It's not about silencing people who are complaining, because:
It's a very silly way to do it.
If they want to ban you, they have that power.
There were plenty of obnoxious complainers left
There are people who hit who weren't. There are likely people hit who don't even post.
It's a bug. It's bad that they haven't communicated with the affected people, and it's not good that they haven't fixed it. (But, as I said before, fixing it is going to require making direct edits to the database, and that is potentially fraught.)
But it's a bug.
( they can easily make a toggle to turn a persons ability to post on or off, but a toggle to turn the new rules takes an act of god? )
Those are completely different systems, and the character builder is vastly more complicated than the forums.
If the builder is so much more complex, then fixing their “bug” should be no problem. all I’m hearing is excuses.
if people who weren’t part of the mass of displeasure with the change of the rules were affected then why is the company so reluctant to fix this?
it is looking more and more like this is intended and it won’t get fixed at all.
and just because you think it is a silly way to do things doesn’t mean it’s not a bad idea and flat out mass banning people would open a whole new can of worms.
maybe obnoxious people are still around because they are tired of a company that doesn’t seem to care about their customers. People complain about things that don’t sit right with them, and this doesn’t sit right with me.
and I seriously doubt fixing the ability to post requires a massive effort to adjust the database that only houses the information of D&D, again excuses for the lack of any effort to do right for the users affected.
they could have fixed this days or weeks ago but it is apparent they are willing to do the absolute minimum to ensure they don’t fix it and those affected quit instead of the company having to itself enforce a permanent ban. Because if the company where to just start openly prema banning people en masse we both know it would get ugly.
Just to point out: If it were targeted at people voicing complaints during the time, I'd certainly be on the affected user list right now.
If the builder is so much more complex, then fixing their “bug” should be no problem. all I’m hearing is excuses.
if people who weren’t part of the mass of displeasure with the change of the rules were affected then why is the company so reluctant to fix this?
it is looking more and more like this is intended and it won’t get fixed at all.
and just because you think it is a silly way to do things doesn’t mean it’s not a bad idea and flat out mass banning people would open a whole new can of worms.
maybe obnoxious people are still around because they are tired of a company that doesn’t seem to care about their customers. People complain about things that don’t sit right with them, and this doesn’t sit right with me.
and I seriously doubt fixing the ability to post requires a massive effort to adjust the database that only houses the information of D&D, again excuses for the lack of any effort to do right for the users affected.
they could have fixed this days or weeks ago but it is apparent they are willing to do the absolute minimum to ensure they don’t fix it and those affected quit instead of the company having to itself enforce a permanent ban. Because if the company where to just start openly prema banning people en masse we both know it would get ugly.
Just to point out: If it were targeted at people voicing complaints during the time, I'd certainly be on the affected user list right now.
Maybe you weren’t as vocal as others, and it’s possible that it affected users that have had forum points against them and the 120 day limit on those points is what’s “buged”, as it provides a nice little failsafe way of saying “we can’t fix it, till the timers run out.”
Wasn’t it posted by another person that the date they have is sometime in early or mid November?
the day passes and those accounts are still “bugged” then what, they have to continue to sit and wait till after Christmas to see if the “bug” is fixed?
How long will those people have to wait before they realize that “bug” will never get fixed because it’s better to just ignore the problem and sooner or later it will take care of itself?
Come November 9th I believe those who have placed tickets on this will see if the “bug” cleared, or if what is suspected is what happened.
During the incident when they announced the spells were going to be retired in the builder, I was incredibly vocal. Probably posted an average of about once per page in the thread.
There are few who have ever been as “vocal” as I have, and not carrying any |*0¡π75 at all is a rare occurrence for me. Yet here I (and others like me) be. I sincerely doubt there was any possible technical glitch involving such suggested 120-day long counter issues involved with this.
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Sadly, a significant number of others are still waiting for the 18th of December for this to be resolved.
If anything, it proves it was intentional. They could have long since altered the server time during one of the downtime updates to clear the glitch and restore the affected users of this bug, but instead decided to to just run both the clock and the affected users off, and ignore something that could have been easily fixed.
?
Your "easily fixed" wouldn't even have done anything.
Also, it's not like they aren't doing anything else during the downtimes. Hand-editing the forum database is a slightly lower priority than getting the servers updated with the new books, tested, and back online.
Should they have fixed it? Barring technical reasons why they can't, and there absolutely could be some, yes, they should.
Should they have been more communicative with the affected users? Hell yeah. Especially if they weren't going to fix it.
Does that mean it was deliberate, as opposed to the clock bug it looks like? No. Not even the slightest. Messing with the database just to silence a few forum posters remains a bizarre idea. They had extant tools to silence people. They swept up a bunch of users who don't even post. They didn't touch many of the most vociferous or obnoxious.
If somebody thinks that DDB did it to specifically silence them, they are vastly overrating how much the folks in charge care in the slightest about them and their opinions.
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It’s beginning to seem intentional at this point since it has only affecting a handful of accounts.
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It's hard to not think so. The issue is clear, it messed up some post dates and even deleting the posts doesn't resolve because we can't fully delete them - they remain on record for mods to see. So whenever we try to post or PM it checks the date and time of our most recent post in log - whether deleted or not - and if too soon it prevents posting. It's a method of avoiding spam.
The solution is just running an SQL query so any post with a date/time greater than current date/time has the date/time set to 1 minute ago. The anti-spam method no longer blocks the posts and the problem is resolved.
It's obvious. It's easy. I've done it before, on a forum that had the same issue. A few mins writing the query, press a button to run and a few seconds later the issue is gone.
There is no justifiable excuse for it taking so long.
This is the test account of Cyb3rM1nd. Posting through this because my main account is locked out of forums due to a glitch.
Click ✨ HERE ✨ For My Youtube Videos featuring Guides, Tips & Tricks for using D&D Beyond.
Need help with Homebrew? Check out ✨ this FAQ/Guide thread ✨ by IamSposta.
It seems kinda like “quiet quitting,” only more like “quiet firing” and against forum users.
Creating Epic Boons on DDB
DDB Buyers' Guide
Hardcovers, DDB & You
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Aye, it's very hard to not be suspicious at this point. There are others who have noticied how sus this is, and I've known them to do shadow-ban tactics before. I would like to be hopeful - but the longer it goes on the harder it becomes to not feel like this is something deliberate.
This is the test account of Cyb3rM1nd. Posting through this because my main account is locked out of forums due to a glitch.
Click ✨ HERE ✨ For My Youtube Videos featuring Guides, Tips & Tricks for using D&D Beyond.
Need help with Homebrew? Check out ✨ this FAQ/Guide thread ✨ by IamSposta.
If that is the case I really have to ask what logic they are using to shadowban people. I don't even use the forums to discuss the games or the company any more, just rp in the off topic threads, same as another user suffering the same thing. Why shadowban us?
Because the more people that can't post, the more people that can't visibly complain about issues on the site?
Whatever the case, for such an issue to go on this long, it's intentional. They've chosen not to fix this issue.
I don't think they're intentionally shadowbanning accounts. I suspect:
1) They are incredibly, embarrassingly, irresponsibly short-staffed in Tech Support / Customer Service. Surely they must know that they are losing a lot of business because of this. We can only imagine what a chaotic mess it must be on their side of the curtain. I don't have a lot of sympathy – they need to fix it.
2) These forums are at the absolute bottom of their priority list. That much is clear. They are neither supported nor monitored except by bots and volunteers. No D&D Beyond or Wizards employee will ever read this thread.
My biggest fear is that they will announce they are retiring the entire dndbeyond forum and messaging system altogether. That would suck.
...Or, do you suppose everything will magically start up again at 2:09am on Dec. 18?
It likely will.
I don't think they're deliberately shadowbanning anyone. It'd be a very silly way to do it, for one.
It's more likely a combination of the forums being low-priority, the fact that it ought to fix itself not too far in the future, and doing raw operations on the database is likely not a power granted to most of staff, and they may be unwilling to do it on a live DB. (And they may not be wrong to think that. I can't think of how it could break things*, but I'm not a DB person, and I don't know what kind of house of cards the forum software is.)
It's still not great, particularly the lack of communication with the affected people.
* Except by screwing up the command, which must enter one's calculations for this kind of thing.
This is actually wrong on no WotC employee reading the thread.
But I can agree with jl8e's comment on there not being much communication about the issue.
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I am curious as to how many accounts that were effected are active and how many are abandoned?
Your last post showed 1,600+ accounts affected, and a good number seem to still remain affected by the glitch and or possible suspension of service.
The user I communicate with has their main account blocked, and it’s been reported and ticketed.
but the response has been more on it being a user side issue than a problem on the server side, and they fear that by responding to the email, the ticket has been pushed further back.
if one looks at the timings of when the sites staff have remarked on this, and the remarks of a Moderator and it appears that it took staff member almost a month to inform the team’s attention, and if that is any indication of how concerned the site’s administrators about this, then the team has made this a low priority task.
I guess what I am asking is, why is something like this occurring and why do some feel like this is deliberate?
Edit: The post by LaTiaJacquise was unusual because the reference to a Y2K type of glitch and because by this day and age that type of thing is a near absolute improbability, a stray random high energy particle can cause a single bit to flip and cause weird effects and this would have had to be one hell of a major coincidence and most computer systems have had some measure of updates to address this.
" Darkvision doesn’t work in Magical darkness, and if something is magical, Never Trust it acts the same way as a non-magical version of that same thing!”- Discotech Mage over a cup of joe.
I'd assume all of them were active, but most of them aren't forum posters.
It's way more likely than that. What probably happened is that one of the servers got its clock messed up. There are any number of reasons that could happen; software bugs and configuration errors are by far the most likely. (It was probably the cause of notifications getting broken as well, since they happened at the same time AFAIK.)
Anyone who accessed the forums during the time between then and when it was caught has their access time set in the future. And, while they probably can fix it by doing direct modifications to the DB, see my previous post.
Dude, it's not about you. It's not about silencing people who are complaining, because:
It's a bug. It's bad that they haven't communicated with the affected people, and it's not good that they haven't fixed it. (But, as I said before, fixing it is going to require making direct edits to the database, and that is potentially fraught.)
But it's a bug.
Those are completely different systems, and the character builder is vastly more complicated than the forums.
Just to point out: If it were targeted at people voicing complaints during the time, I'd certainly be on the affected user list right now.
During the incident when they announced the spells were going to be retired in the builder, I was incredibly vocal. Probably posted an average of about once per page in the thread.
There are few who have ever been as “vocal” as I have, and not carrying any |*0¡π75 at all is a rare occurrence for me. Yet here I (and others like me) be. I sincerely doubt there was any possible technical glitch involving such suggested 120-day long counter issues involved with this.
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Testing to see if I can post now...
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I'm still unable to post on my original account, probably will not be able to until Dec 18 unless something changes before then.
?
Your "easily fixed" wouldn't even have done anything.
Also, it's not like they aren't doing anything else during the downtimes. Hand-editing the forum database is a slightly lower priority than getting the servers updated with the new books, tested, and back online.
Should they have fixed it? Barring technical reasons why they can't, and there absolutely could be some, yes, they should.
Should they have been more communicative with the affected users? Hell yeah. Especially if they weren't going to fix it.
Does that mean it was deliberate, as opposed to the clock bug it looks like? No. Not even the slightest. Messing with the database just to silence a few forum posters remains a bizarre idea. They had extant tools to silence people. They swept up a bunch of users who don't even post. They didn't touch many of the most vociferous or obnoxious.
If somebody thinks that DDB did it to specifically silence them, they are vastly overrating how much the folks in charge care in the slightest about them and their opinions.