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Forums > CSDb Feedback > Rollback/wiki-style edits?

2004-02-03 20:09

Ymgve

Registered: May 2002
Posts: 84

Rollback/wiki-style edits?

The recent events seem to have exposed a few flaws in the CSDb system. Firstly, it seems there isn't a good backup policy in place (Correct me if I'm wrong on this), but also there seems to be no protection from deletion if entries aren't locked. The former problem can easily be solved with an automated script dumping the databases every N days, but the latter one is a bit more problematic. I therefore propose that a later version of CSDb should not really delete entries when normal users do a deletion, but only mark them as deleted, making them invisible for everyone but the admins of this site. Alternatively, a wiki-style system could be made, where every revision of an entry (including removal) will be stored, so an admin easily can change entries back to an earlier revision if somebody mess up. This, in combination with possibly better logging (I don't know how much is already logged now, but it seemed like it was hard to find out exactly _who_ did the deletion) would hopefully make the system a bit more robust.

Does this sound like a good idea?

2004-02-03 21:36

Perff
Administrator

Posts: 1679

I don't how many times I need to write the same thing over and over again, but one more time dosn't hurt. :)

In CSDb we store all changes made to the entries, this includes deletions.
In more details an sql-expression is stored for all changes which will undo it, and then through some admin-tools we can see all changed (and deletions) and either undo or confirm them.
(Yes it is a BIG table! :) )

About loging. We log every time someone logs in to CSDb.
Besides we also have a standart apache access_log file which goes about a week back. (I made a copy of the deletion day)
Using these logs I have the email, login name and ip on the user who deleted the stuff, but as the email is a hotmail probably only made for the purpose of deletion, and the ip is from a dynamically distributor it really dosn't say much. :/
(We also know which OS and browser he used if that would help anything)

Then you might ask: "If you have all this how could all that data be lost?"
That is a good question, and I must admit that it was my fault. :(
Instead of undo-ing his deletions I accidently aproved them inderectly, causing all the backup-info to be deleted.
This happened due to some not-so-smart design on the admin-pages, but this have been fixed so it should NEVER happen again!!

Just to state a little thing. This is NOT the first time someone have deleted a lot of stuff, and all the other times we have recovered it without many noticing it, so our system works! (Not that it can not be improved though. :) )

Hope this clears a thing or two.

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