Unmerged Thread Starters

[coz1]

As I do not frequent this area often, I am unsure if this has been covered but I notice of late some longstanding threads now have their thread starter listed as "unmerged" followed by a number. As the move was over a year ago, and this is only now happening, I am unsure why. It seems a sad thing to see some longstanding members of the past have their names erased simply because they are no longer active, and especially as it seemed no issue when the forum first changed platforms. If needed, I can assist in identifying many of these people simply by their posts. But I doubt that is the issue. Kudos to all working on surely continual issues in making sure the forum remains running smoothly and pulling over what they can from the previous iteration, but this did not seem problematic, until it did.

(Also, I still don't have my 500k icon even though I had it before and at the least, Castellon has his. )

 

[pevergreen]

500k icon: known problem, I don't have mine back either (most don't)

The unmerged thing - again a known thing - people didn't merge their old forum and paradox accounts = unmerged. They can always come back and do it

 

[Wagonlitz]

As I do not frequent this area often, I am unsure if this has been covered but I notice of late some longstanding threads now have their thread starter listed as "unmerged" followed by a number. As the move was over a year ago, and this is only now happening, I am unsure why. It seems a sad thing to see some longstanding members of the past have their names erased simply because they are no longer active, and especially as it seemed no issue when the forum first changed platforms. If needed, I can assist in identifying many of these people simply by their posts. But I doubt that is the issue. Kudos to all working on surely continual issues in making sure the forum remains running smoothly and pulling over what they can from the previous iteration, but this did not seem problematic, until it did.

(Also, I still don't have my 500k icon even though I had it before and at the least, Castellon has his. )

As Pevergreen said the unmerged thing is WAD. On December 12th this year all accounts which were unmerged (i.e. which hadn't been used at least since before the migration) had their names scrambled. According to TinyWiking it happened because in the future merging is to be used for some as of yet unannounced feature and for some, to us mortals unknown, reason unmerged accounts couldn't be allowed to have a name unless it was to mess up this feature.

So an email was sent out in November to every single unmerged account about the scrambling. I personally managed to reach out to some long time users and have it prevented that their names got scrambles, but obviously I could only reach the ones I know.

So now people like Top Cat (the one who posted the Octagon...) and all the people in the 9/11 thread are scrambled. Especially the latter is a bit sad, since that thread is a time capsule given that it was opened something like 8 minutes after the second tower was hit. And now it's much harder to read, since back then quotes worked differently, as you surely know, and hence there is no hyperlink from the quote to the post quoted and with scrambled names it can be really hard to find out who got quoted.
The Octagon is less of a problem in that people know who made it; but it still looks stupid to have it say unmerged instead of Top Cat and be missing that Union Jack---especially given that that post is the post of the decade 2002 to 2012.

 

[Peter Ebbesen]

WAD or not, I find it pretty sad to see all those old AAR threads lose the names of their creators and participants because they've left the forums; It is a loss of forum history. Future archaeologists will mark this as the beginning of the end, mark my words. ( )

 

[Wagonlitz]

WAD or not, I find it pretty sad to see all those old AAR threads lose the names of their creators and participants because they've left the forums; It is a loss of forum history. Future archaeologists will mark this as the beginning of the end, mark my words. ( )

Oh I fully agree that it's really sad.

 

[coz1]

I fully agree as well. I support Paradox in nearly all of their efforts as may be seen by my continued allegiance to them for over a decade plus. However, some unnamed or future desired project that deprives those of the past that have certainly given the company an imprimatur seems an ill considered future step. My two ducats.

 

[loup99]

I will join the others posting here in that it feels sad and unfortunate to see a part of the forum history and people who shaped it during many years disappearing and becoming "unmerged". It feels a bit paradoxal to me that the forum for games relating to history does not keep its own history.

That said there may be great reasons behind this, and as someone who has no insight in the reasoning behind the decision I can't judge this with the whole picture in mind.