Account deletion and password reset webpages

[Achilles]

So how come a user's account met one of those requirements (5 game minimum), but still got deleted?

This isn't an alt, by the way, this was the main account of a user who's been here since 2014 and has clocked in thousands of posts here.

There have only been 3 waves of account deletions

1) user requested deletion via email
2) user was inactive in-game for over 2 years + free account + low games played
3) user had an old facebook account that never setup a username/password/email registration and had 0 games played

If an account was deleted it was in one of these 3 buckets.

A game played means an actual game played, not a disconnected game. I'm guessing the user you are asking about didn't actually have 5 games played.

[Schultz128]

Considering they were a friend from a group of friends when we played ToS often, I'm relatively certain that we played more than 5 games together.

[Cyantic]

As for anyone else who may have had their account deleted, I'm guessing its the FM group mostly, we are running a DB purge of very old accounts. Accounts that are free + 2 years inactive + low games played.

this isnt true
Erravi participated for sure in this game (you can see them on the roster at 3), which was held May 20th, 2017. It's been 618 days since then (almost certainly less but I don't want to dig for their last quoted post), which falls short of the 618 days.

[Schultz128]

As for anyone else who may have had their account deleted, I'm guessing its the FM group mostly, we are running a DB purge of very old accounts. Accounts that are free + 2 years inactive + low games played.

this isnt true
Erravi participated for sure in this game (you can see them on the roster at 3), which was held May 20th, 2017. It's been 618 days since then (almost certainly less but I don't want to dig for their last quoted post), which falls short of the 618 days.

They're going by logging into the game itself, not forums.

[Cyantic]

As for anyone else who may have had their account deleted, I'm guessing its the FM group mostly, we are running a DB purge of very old accounts. Accounts that are free + 2 years inactive + low games played.

this isnt true
Erravi participated for sure in this game (you can see them on the roster at 3), which was held May 20th, 2017. It's been 618 days since then (almost certainly less but I don't want to dig for their last quoted post), which falls short of the 618 days.

They're going by logging into the game itself, not forums.

Then I think Cyantic should be deleted in that case (?), because by my memory (admittedly poor), I have not played a game since 2015 (or at it's latest 2016). And I'm pretty sure Cyantic never went into a game since I had another account solely for that.

[Schultz128]

As for anyone else who may have had their account deleted, I'm guessing its the FM group mostly, we are running a DB purge of very old accounts. Accounts that are free + 2 years inactive + low games played.

this isnt true
Erravi participated for sure in this game (you can see them on the roster at 3), which was held May 20th, 2017. It's been 618 days since then (almost certainly less but I don't want to dig for their last quoted post), which falls short of the 618 days.

They're going by logging into the game itself, not forums.

Then I think Cyantic should be deleted in that case (?), because by my memory (admittedly poor), I have not played a game since 2015 (or at it's latest 2016). And I'm pretty sure Cyantic never went into a game since I had another account solely for that.

-5 games minimum.
-Buy something from ToS.
-Log in within past 2 years.

According to shapesifter, you only needed to meet 1 of these 3 requirements, not all of them.

Apparently.

[Achilles]

We are checking game login times, not forums, correct. The purge script isn't done running yet, it actually takes quite a lot of time to process this many account deletions. Around 25% of ToS accounts were in this highly inactive and low game played + free account category.

If you don't want your forum account to get purged you should log into the game.

[Cyantic]

We are checking game login times, not forums, correct. The purge script isn't done running yet, it actually takes quite a lot of time to process this many account deletions. Around 25% of ToS accounts were in this highly inactive and low game played + free account category.

If you don't want your forum account to get purged you should log into the game.

Oh, if it's still running, then fair enough. That would explain things.

[ChubbyMooshroom9]

We are checking game login times, not forums, correct. The purge script isn't done running yet, it actually takes quite a lot of time to process this many account deletions. Around 25% of ToS accounts were in this highly inactive and low game played + free account category.

If you don't want your forum account to get purged you should log into the game.

[Achilles]

You may be asking why we are doing the purge. Up until this point we have held onto accounts from the very first day Town of Salem launched. As the database grew to over 8 million accounts the cost of storage increased and down time when we needed to do database updates kept increasing but we wanted to keep accounts around in case a user ever returned. With the data breach it became obvious how holding on to all of these accounts can really be detrimental. Even if a user hasn't played ToS in 4 years we are still responsible for securing their data. Sending out 8 million emails about the breach took a good bit of time and had a real monetary cost to it. Plus our email got absolutely hammered and shapesifter has had trouble responding to the usual emails because we received almost 10k emails in the 3 days after the breach. We believe it is for the best to purge out these highly inactive, free, low games played accounts going forward.

[ICECLIMBERS]

Taking the webpages down until we also add a field for an email. We were hoping to make it easier for users who had forgotten their email to use the webforms but it seems someone is already taking advantage of that so we will have to add it.

I see lots of questions about GDPR deletions in the thread. Yes GDPR deletions are irreversible. We are required by GDPR law to purge all of the data from a user, this means we can't keep any backup data of an account to restore it or else we would be breaking that law. Thus all of those deletions are permanent.

As for anyone else who may have had their account deleted, I'm guessing its the FM group mostly, we are running a DB purge of very old accounts. Accounts that are free + 2 years inactive + low games played.

So I can send the deletion emails to me and delete other peoples’ accounts???

[Schultz128]

We are checking game login times, not forums, correct. The purge script isn't done running yet, it actually takes quite a lot of time to process this many account deletions. Around 25% of ToS accounts were in this highly inactive and low game played + free account category.

If you don't want your forum account to get purged you should log into the game.

And we were supposed to be able to prevent this with what warning, exactly?

From what I understand from conversations with a Dev team member, it was simply assumed that if you use the forums, then you're obviously active in the game and will not be effected by these deletion waves. What kind of practice is it to simply assume over actions as big as these?

I'm still wondering where an apology is, this entire situation hasn't been addressed like the total fuck up it has been and disservice to the forum community.

A community that seems to just be disregarded here, judging by these recent actions and the way they have been addressed.

It doesn't feel like the forums are treated fairly as apart of the Town of Salem community. We should have been warned about this prior, where we could notify via e-mail or something of the liking to prevent our accounts from being deleted. Could botters or people of that sort possibly get by? Yes, they can. Is it worth it to let some botters get by if it means that innocent community members can save their accounts? Yes, it is.

Members of the community aren't perfectly represented by your game statistics. There are people here who don't play the game as much anymore, or just stopped entirely. But they stayed for the community with their friends, the threads, the games, the posts, and the laughs. Just because what we do here isn't represented in the game's statistics does not mean they have no value to anyone.

Multiple FM Game Threads are almost butchered due to the deletion of some accounts. The same can be said for other categories in the Forum Games category (but that doesn't make money, so why bother?).

We have users who have lost numerous saved messages and PMs regarding their own work, whether it be for games or other personal issues. You can't expect them to save it to different places, because they didn't expect sudden deletion without warning.

We have users who have sunk thousands of posts into this forum over the past 4-5 years that have suddenly had all of that effort and memories erased for no reason.

Your own system for how deletion has been processed so far has shown to be faulty. I have alts that have never logged into the game, let alone play a game, that are still standing, yet accounts that have met one of the basic requirements stated before were deleted (toxinfrog613, HeyItsJen15, and likely others). But I guess we're just not remembering correctly, right?

Every action is 5 steps backwards and it's being insisted that we're still making progress forward.

The Dev team is obviously out of touch with this community, as we've shown we have better relations with the GMods, who do a better job of running the place for free.

At this point, you should either work on making this place feel like a part of the overall community, or stop acting like the Devs give a shit and delete the forums already.

[TrueGent]

yo sorry to interrupt but can I be able to change my email thanks

[Achilles]

Taking the webpages down until we also add a field for an email. We were hoping to make it easier for users who had forgotten their email to use the webforms but it seems someone is already taking advantage of that so we will have to add it.

I see lots of questions about GDPR deletions in the thread. Yes GDPR deletions are irreversible. We are required by GDPR law to purge all of the data from a user, this means we can't keep any backup data of an account to restore it or else we would be breaking that law. Thus all of those deletions are permanent.

As for anyone else who may have had their account deleted, I'm guessing its the FM group mostly, we are running a DB purge of very old accounts. Accounts that are free + 2 years inactive + low games played.

So I can send the deletion emails to me and delete other peoples’ accounts???

No the email request goes to the registered email of the account and you can simply ignore it if you didn't request it. Of course we don't want someone to be able to spam users so were fixing the script.

[Nellyfox]

Taking the webpages down until we also add a field for an email. We were hoping to make it easier for users who had forgotten their email to use the webforms but it seems someone is already taking advantage of that so we will have to add it.

I see lots of questions about GDPR deletions in the thread. Yes GDPR deletions are irreversible. We are required by GDPR law to purge all of the data from a user, this means we can't keep any backup data of an account to restore it or else we would be breaking that law. Thus all of those deletions are permanent.

As for anyone else who may have had their account deleted, I'm guessing its the FM group mostly, we are running a DB purge of very old accounts. Accounts that are free + 2 years inactive + low games played.

So I can send the deletion emails to me and delete other peoples’ accounts???

No the email request goes to the registered email of the account and you can simply ignore it if you didn't request it. Of course we don't want someone to be able to spam users so were fixing the script.

Again, I must ask -- have you considered having people log in to request deletion? Whether in-game or through the forums.

[Achilles]

Taking the webpages down until we also add a field for an email. We were hoping to make it easier for users who had forgotten their email to use the webforms but it seems someone is already taking advantage of that so we will have to add it.

I see lots of questions about GDPR deletions in the thread. Yes GDPR deletions are irreversible. We are required by GDPR law to purge all of the data from a user, this means we can't keep any backup data of an account to restore it or else we would be breaking that law. Thus all of those deletions are permanent.

As for anyone else who may have had their account deleted, I'm guessing its the FM group mostly, we are running a DB purge of very old accounts. Accounts that are free + 2 years inactive + low games played.

So I can send the deletion emails to me and delete other peoples’ accounts???

No the email request goes to the registered email of the account and you can simply ignore it if you didn't request it. Of course we don't want someone to be able to spam users so were fixing the script.

Again, I must ask -- have you considered having people log in to request deletion? Whether in-game or through the forums.

The original post says we will be incorporating it into the game as well

[LevinSnakesRise]

Moving forward I can only hope we offer a way to exclude some accounts. Thankfully none of our community members who are no longer with us (those that passed) have been touched by the script, but I sincerely hope we can forward a list of exceptions to be included into the script. While inactive accounts being purged aren't an issue personally, I wish the community as a whole would have been taken into account, or that some warning had been sent out or posted on the forums (hell I would have changed it to Global) about the issue, if not both. I can only image all the memories erased. Memories are priceless, and they're now gone.

Phooey, I say.


Just, give proper warnings. Nothing fancy, just a simple 'Hey we're purging accounts on 'this date', please login by 'this date' to save your account!'

I also can vouch some of the people Schultz listed had indeed played within the past 2 years and their accounts were deleted. The script isn't perfect, and I feel like we're acting like it couldn't possibly make a mistake. We had this discussion as a group on the mod discord with Brandon. It's unlikely, but still possible. Don't act like it is improbable. It's a script. Scripts break. They make mistakes. It's a thing.

Thank you.

[Nellyfox]

The original post says we will be incorporating it into the game as well

Ah, you say links so I assumed that you'd be taken to the standard, original pages from in-game. My mistake.

@Schultz HeyItsJen15 is reasonable because Jen used her original account to play ToS with others -- the only reason she's important is because the signing up process (back then? Not sure if it changed) was rather confusing because you signed up via phpBB rather than actually in-game.

[Technetium]

So...was the script set to stop running to give time to fix it to prevent it from deleting even more still-in-use accounts?

It'd have been good to have some warning of this, maybe there was and I didn't see any, but this account purge with false positives in it certainly seemed very sudden. Maybe this would have gotten people to ask questions about it that may have led to changes being made beforehand to prevent this situation.

I have a suspicion, though, that because many active forumers either no longer play, do not buy microtransactions, or express a dislike for the game, or various combinations of those, that the amount the developers care about such accounts is zero. Which makes some sort of sense, I suppose, but doesn't make the actions taken ones that should have been taken.

[ChubbyMooshroom9]

Taking the webpages down until we also add a field for an email. We were hoping to make it easier for users who had forgotten their email to use the webforms but it seems someone is already taking advantage of that so we will have to add it.

I see lots of questions about GDPR deletions in the thread. Yes GDPR deletions are irreversible. We are required by GDPR law to purge all of the data from a user, this means we can't keep any backup data of an account to restore it or else we would be breaking that law. Thus all of those deletions are permanent.

As for anyone else who may have had their account deleted, I'm guessing its the FM group mostly, we are running a DB purge of very old accounts. Accounts that are free + 2 years inactive + low games played.

So I can send the deletion emails to me and delete other peoples’ accounts???

No the email request goes to the registered email of the account and you can simply ignore it if you didn't request it. Of course we don't want someone to be able to spam users so were fixing the script.

Again, I must ask -- have you considered having people log in to request deletion? Whether in-game or through the forums.

The original post says we will be incorporating it into the game as well

But if people can do with simply an email the why?

It sounds like what you said is just the current one, but with a fancy email box.

And we were supposed to be able to prevent this with what warning, exactly?

From what I understand from conversations with a Dev team member, it was simply assumed that if you use the forums, then you're obviously active in the game and will not be effected by these deletion waves. What kind of practice is it to simply assume over actions as big as these?

I'm still wondering where an apology is, this entire situation hasn't been addressed like the total fuck up it has been and disservice to the forum community.

A community that seems to just be disregarded here, judging by these recent actions and the way they have been addressed.

It doesn't feel like the forums are treated fairly as apart of the Town of Salem community. We should have been warned about this prior, where we could notify via e-mail or something of the liking to prevent our accounts from being deleted. Could botters or people of that sort possibly get by? Yes, they can. Is it worth it to let some botters get by if it means that innocent community members can save their accounts? Yes, it is.

Members of the community aren't perfectly represented by your game statistics. There are people here who don't play the game as much anymore, or just stopped entirely. But they stayed for the community with their friends, the threads, the games, the posts, and the laughs. Just because what we do here isn't represented in the game's statistics does not mean they have no value to anyone.

Multiple FM Game Threads are almost butchered due to the deletion of some accounts. The same can be said for other categories in the Forum Games category (but that doesn't make money, so why bother?).

We have users who have lost numerous saved messages and PMs regarding their own work, whether it be for games or other personal issues. You can't expect them to save it to different places, because they didn't expect sudden deletion without warning.

We have users who have sunk thousands of posts into this forum over the past 4-5 years that have suddenly had all of that effort and memories erased for no reason.

Your own system for how deletion has been processed so far has shown to be faulty. I have alts that have never logged into the game, let alone play a game, that are still standing, yet accounts that have met one of the basic requirements stated before were deleted (toxinfrog613, HeyItsJen15, and likely others). But I guess we're just not remembering correctly, right?

Every action is 5 steps backwards and it's being insisted that we're still making progress forward.

The Dev team is obviously out of touch with this community, as we've shown we have better relations with the GMods, who do a better job of running the place for free.

At this point, you should either work on making this place feel like a part of the overall community, or stop acting like the Devs give a shit and delete the forums already.

bravo, bravo much nicer than i would have ever put it

[Chemist1422]

will my account be deleted? this account doesn't have a ToS account linked to it, it was just an alt turned into my main at the start so it doesn't have one.

Not old enough for that

[ICECLIMBERS]

I think it would have been best to have made an announcement and to have started with those with 0 games. This would purge a lot of the forum spam bots. Of course some alternate accounts would be lost, but that's unfortunate. Instead some accounts that were active on these forums at some point are gone. I sincerely doubt all of them played less than 10 games (I know at least one of them posted in the ToS Discussion subforum, and most of them played FM and I doubt somebody would come to that without playing at least 10 games) so unless each of them requested deletion... yeah I have my qualms.

Permabanned accounts should've been the first victims. Gets rid of the plethor of bot accounts from October.

[PyromonkeyGG]

will my account be deleted? this account doesn't have a ToS account linked to it, it was just an alt turned into my main at the start so it doesn't have one.

That account does have a game account.

[EvanManManMan]

Stop ignoring Schultz

[Waffleme3]

Stop ignoring Schultz