The Situation With the Diagrams
 

The reason the diagrams section was offline for over a month was that a database accident occurred while I was working on the site. This resulted in some building data being permanently lost. There was a backup of the database available, but because of the nature of the data loss it took some time to put everything back together and not all building data can be restored.

Data for about 5,000 buildings has been lost, though not all data for these 5,000 buildings is gone. The data for these buildings that has been lost consists of:

- the city the building is in
- building name (name, native name, additional names, address)
- building status
- building use (primary only)
- structure type (primary only)
- construction dates
- floor count
- various other numerical data (gross floor area, elevator count, etc.)

No drawings have been lost, no height data has been lost.

For all buildings which data has been lost there is still record that the building exists in the database, and all additional building data (heights, drawings, secondary building uses and structure types, descriptions, external URLs, building style and materials) is still fully intact. From this remaining data and any drawings associated with a building we should be able to restore some of these lost buildings by figuring out what they are and reentering the data. Because of this I have removed the capability of adding new buildings so that we do not create duplicate entries for buildings which already exist and should be manually restored.

Some of the buildings in the database now contain out of date data as a result of restoring from the backup database. The out of date data is mostly apparent in buildings which have been proposed or under-construction in the past year and have either been completed or put on hold or cancelled in this time.

Not all buildings have been restored so far, and some cities are not available yet either. I am still piecing some of the building data back into the database. Even so, when all data that can be has been restored there will be about 1,800 drawings which are associated with a building we have no name for and don't know what city it's in, and are therefore not appearing in the diagrams anymore. I will do what I can to get these drawings back into the diagrams by figuring out their associated building data.

I feel very, very terrible for allowing this data loss happen. Accidents do occur, and that's why database backups are supposed to be done regularly. The main reason why a more recent database backup was not available is because of a bug in the backup function for the database and the cumbersome steps needed to be done to deal with this bug. I have already taken steps to fix this problem and ensure backups are done more often.

Sheesh! This is all a bad joke, right? :(


What about the speed? The pages are loading really slowly if not at all but my computer is also known to be fussy at times.

Can people assist by reporting the errors they can find? I am already aware of quite a few myself.

moved to [Building Requests & Database Corrections thread]

Dylan, can you give to moderators right to move buildings without cities into existing cities?
For example I know where all my drawn buildings are situated.

I'm working on ways to restore people's drawings, restore the buildings and get the buildings associated with their proper cities again.

A list of corrupted entries can be found on

http://forum.skyscraperpage.com/show...95#post4507895

I am estonished how many objects are concerned! And there is no systematics what structures are concerned and what not! Is there not a possibility to display all corrupted entries?

We can neither add new building, nor edit old pages with missing data.

We can neither improve site, nor mend existing pages.

We can NOTHING to do!

:tantrum:

Sorry, I have had to remove some editing features until all the available building data is back in place. This is to prevent duplicate building entries from being created and different versions of building data being put into the database.

All illustrators who had drawings which disappeared from the diagrams have now been sent an email with instructions on how their drawings can get back in the diagrams. What I need is the building and city names for each drawing, so hopefully illustrators can remember what these are for their drawings.

I will continue piecing things back together and post relevant updates in this thread.

If it's need, what can we do to help you, Dylan?

What is the best we can do? Should we collect loss entries?

Alpha, have you seen this page?
http://skyscraperpage.com/site/drawingrestore/

I can't view that page, so I doubt he can.

Dylan must send you an e-mail with this link and offer to check city and name of lost buildings

Can also entries without drawings be restored?

I cannot restore them, but I can find something that cannot be found thru diagram search
http://forum.skyscraperpage.com/showthread.php?t=174173

Why should it be impossible to restore these entries without drawing?

http://skyscraperpage.com/cities/?buildingID=81291
Karachev CHAYKA-Transmitter

Location: Karachev, Bryansk Oblast, Russia
Use: Communication
Type: Guyed mast
Status: Built


http://skyscraperpage.com/cities/?buildingID=79389
Funkturm Freiburg

Location: Freiburg, Baden-Württemberg, Germany
Use: Communication
Type: Tower
Status: Built


http://skyscraperpage.com/cities/?buildingID=81963
Rodniki TV Mast

Location: Rodniki, Ivanovo Oblast, Russia
Use: Communication
Type: Guyed mast
Status: Built

http://skyscraperpage.com/cities/?buildingID=76937
Bakaly TV Mast

Location: Bakaly, Bashkortostan, Russia
Type: Guyed mast
Use: Communication
Status: Built

http://skyscraperpage.com/cities/?buildingID=76939
Novaja TV Mast

Location: Karaganda, Kazhakstan
Type: Guyed mast
Use: Communication
Status: Built

http://skyscraperpage.com/cities/?buildingID=76941
Uchkizil TV Mast

Location: Termez, Uzbekistan
Type: Guyed mast
Use: Communication
Status: Built

http://skyscraperpage.com/cities/?buildingID=76940
Maiak Radio Centre, 350 metres mast

Location: Majak, Moldova
Type: Guyed mast
Use: Communication
Status: Destroyed

When everything will be repaired?

I completed the identification of my lost drawings. You can start reconstructing them!

Thanks guys.

There are many building entries which have been lost, although some data for the buildings does remain. Many of these are shorter buildings, and since this is SkyscraperPage and a diagram website I have been focusing on restoring the most important buildings only. It will be tricky to restore all lost entries properly, but I'll see what can be done. Most likely a special editing form will need to be created, similar to the one for drawings.

350 of the 1800 lost drawings have already been restored. Thank you to all who have entered data for their drawings, and I am sorry for messing things up like this.

On the odd chance that any illustrators who should have didn't get this by email you can visit this page to see if you have drawings here. If not then you have nothing to concern yourself with. http://skyscraperpage.com/site/drawingrestore/