Is our content with Ning SAFE?

[Amit]

Hi All,

I recently discovered an issue with few of my old images hosted on ning,  now going on "not found". I received a strange reply from NIng that it got deleted in their regular maintenance and can't be recovered, hence they cant do anything about it.  Though i am a long time customer with Ning with relatively less issues but this one got me worried.  Content deletion is a serious issue and this means it can also be applicable to other things like, blogs, forums and so on... 

Below is the text of my email  :

Hi,

I have been using ning since 2008. Over a period of time we have posted lots of content in terms of blogs and forums. It is now that i am observing "many of my old images that were added in those blogs are now going on [not found]." 

PS: These images have NOT been deleted from our side. 

Attached is the list of image urls which are going on "not found" for apparently no reason. Kindly look into it.

Those blogs have some high profile interviews of CEOs of big corporate and it is extremely important for us that they show up and not go on "not found"

Regards,
Amit

 

This is their reply

Hi Amit, 

Thanks for that information. I looked these image URLs up in our database and I see that they were deleted. There was an issue back in February when during some maintenance work some content was affected. Our engineers were able to restore all but a few pieces of this affected content. It looks like these thirteen images you noted here were unable to be restored.

If you are in the habit of archiving your network's content, you may have a copy of these images in your archived files. Please check there for these. If you have them, you can then re-upload them to the network and add them back to the blog posts in question. 

Otherwise, I would advise you remove these dead image links from your existing blog posts or try to otherwise recreate the images that were previously in them. 

Best,
Monica

 

I have not archived any content and i am left with no other option than to remove that part where in the images appear..

This is disappointing.  

I need an assurance from ning that such instances will not be repeated. i request fellow community members to kindly archive your content else u may face a similar situation.

[Aaron]

Hi Amit,

This was a one-off case that happened a few months ago, and as Monica explained, we were able to recover most of the missing content. If you have any further questions, please follow up in the support ticket you opened.

—Aaron

[Amit]

Aaron for you  it's just an one off case.. for me it's an extra load on my already hectic schedule. What is more disappointing or rather irritating is that, whosoever's content was lost wasn't informed either or there wasn't any information about the same. I got to know until i discovered it myself..

And what am i going to follow up on the support ticket. she has clearly said recreate it.. is that the solution? Are you guys going to help me recreate them?? 

As long time paying member i have the right to have my content completely safe on your servers and if any thing goes wrong , you should have a basic courtesy of at least informing such a member about the same..

[Eric Suesz]

Let us know your ticket number, and we'll take a closer look and respond to you with as much info as we can. Thanks. 

[Amit]

Thanks Eric. the Ticket number is  #00783880

[Eric Suesz]

Okay, I checked into this, and it does seem like Monica gave you all the right info about this when she responded to your ticket. There were 13 images that were lost, and we were not able to retrieve them. I'm sorry that this happened. I probably don't have a fully satisfactory solution for you. This was a one-time event that we know the root cause of, and it won't be happening again, but I know that probably isn't any consolation.