General Discussion - Reef Central- Finally Gone?

Early statements have indicated that it when Reef Central comes back on line it will be without all previous data.

It will be interesting to see if a centralized community will replace Reef Central, or if more concerted efforts will be put into local reef communities.

Reef Central wrote:

First, I would like to apologize to all of our members, sponsors and even our staff. We had a breach in our security systems, allowing easy access [by a hacker] to our very important files and database. Most of these items were either corrupted or completely deleted. We made the mistake of placing our back ups on the same server as which we operated the site on (yes, we know, a HUGE mistake). As for our sponsors, as per our agreement [very similar to user agreement] in the event...

nano-reef had a database crash that wiped out 1-13 July and njreefers forum is currently broken. Scarry that it's all happening near each other.

Edit: http://www.reefbuilders.com/2009/07/16/reef-central-offline-indefinitely-database-destroyed/ - http://www.reefbuilders.com/2009/07/16/reef-central-offline-indefinitely-database-destroyed/

and njreefers forum is currently broken.

NJReefers need some website help. I'm surprised by the lack of info with their macna site. I sure hope they get that rolling soon.

Yes they do. The club doesn't really have anyone that does webpages for a living as far as I know and the presidency is doing most of the heavy lifting. (My help has been posting updates to the various forums in MACNA's name)

I've also learned that joomla stinks for forums imo, but that's a different rant I have.

vBulletin Message

Hello RC Members.

Sorry for the interruption. We'll be back in a little while, I need to check something.

To the folks spreading rumors and making up quotes, it's pretty sad when you have to resort to lying to try and get members.

The truth is that during an upgrade to mySQL we encountered an error that needed to be corrected. Unlike most sites, our database is very large and routine checks can take quite a long time to run. That's one of the reasons why we're one of the few sites that runs a full nightly backup. We'll be back this morning with virtually zero data loss. Sorry to disappoint the folks forging the emails.

Slander and libel are pretty serious things.
Cheers

We could go global start a empire!

Although RC can be a tremendous resource, I find myself continually at odds with alot of the information - and in particular opinions that are touted as absolute fact - that gets circulated on that site.

Examples - from my own experiences (paraphrasing here):

1) "That $90 EBay RO/DI unit you bought is garbage and won't even work; it will leak and fall apart and you will NEVER get '0 TDS water' from it becasue it is made in China...Unless you go out and buy a ($400+) Spectrapure MaxCap RO/DIsystem, your water will be no good..."

2) "Those Odyssea lights you have will burn your house down and their light output is 'wrong' will kill all your corals..."

3) "Your (Rubbermaid) sump will crack within the first month and you will be sorry then cause you saved a few bucks but your house floods..."

4) "Only Salifert (later responses changed to Elos or LaMotte) test kits work; your API kits can't be accurate..."

5A) "You can't get 50 scfh out of that (OTP3000) pump..."

B) After posting a Dywer meter shot w/ the ball pegged past 50 scfh - "That meter must be faulty..."

C) After posting my 'Double Octo" DIY skimmer build pics - "That's not possible that a single pump can run 2 skimmers - I think you photoshopped the pics..."

The absolute best for me though, is:

"Don't worry, I've helped alot of newbies like you get things straightened out..."

So, I much prefer things here at WMAS...

So, I much prefer things here at WMAS...

"powertripping is a sport"

Also in the email was the explanation that many moderators of other reef boards (like ours) were spreading false rumors about hacking and the like.

Let me begin by offering an apology from the administration of Reef
Central for any inconvenience or frustrations you may have experienced
during the hours Reef Central was not accessible. Let me also
immediately dismiss any fears that our databases have been compromised
or “hacked”, or that there has been any loss of data.

We have been planning major enhancements to Reef Central for many
months. Many of these planned enhancements are a direct response to
requests from our most valuable resource, the members of our
community. We believe these improvements will substantially improve
your Reef Central experience with increased browsing speed, improved
search functionality, brand new selling forums as well as many
improved features for our Premium Members and Sponsors.

For those of you who may not have ever noticed the round button with
the label “BB 75” at the bottom of each page on Reef Central, this
button relates to Reef Central’s ranking by Big Board.com, and
reflects Reef Central’s position as the 75th largest bulletin board on
the planet. As might be expected, you cannot achieve growth of this
size without developing a database of gigantic proportions. As part of
the planned upgrade process, some maintenance was scheduled for the
database. It was during this scheduled maintenance that errors were
encountered. Even though the upgrade was tested on our developmental
server prior to the live update, we still encountered some
compatibility issues between our database software and our board
software. Resolving these issues was a time-consuming process, as it
was directly impacted by the size of the database. A process that was
scheduled to be performed during normal nightly maintenance (and one
not expected to be noticed by the users) became an extended outage.

A lesson the administration of the board has taken from this incident
is to provide frequent updates to our membership when prolonged
downtime occurs by utilizing a new web based communication tool that
won't rely on our servers being available to communicate via email.
The main reason (and the most important one) is to keep our community
informed. Unfortunately, a secondary reason is to mitigate some of the
behavior we witnessed from the owners and administrators of other
reefing boards. It is an unfortunate truth that several reefing boards
used our downtime in an attempt to alarm our members and sponsors,
both by posting forged “quotes” from our administrators and by
engaging in rampant speculation as to the “demise” of Reef Central.
Reef Central has a standing, long-time policy of not allowing negative
discussion of other reefing boards on this site. We are saddened that
more communities don’t recognize the honor in this practice, and we
offer our apologies if you were upset by the irresponsible rumors
being spread.

We recognize the importance of this community to our friends and
fellow hobbyists, and we will continue to do all we can to justify the
respect and gratitude that so many members have displayed towards Reef
Central.

Ryan Baker
RC Administrator
mailto:[email protected] - [email protected]