Hi,
On Sat, Aug 18, 2012 at 12:42 AM, Daniel Zahn dzahn@wikimedia.org wrote:
Alright, so inserted the exact number of messages i deleted on Aug. 2 in the same places/dates, that should bring message numbering and links back to the same state before i deleted that thread. As others have mentioned before there have been other inconsistencies in it before though, so you can most likely still find other issues but to the best of my knowledge they should be unrelated. Especially anything that is older than April 2012 should not have been affected by my recent change.
Thanks for your efforts, Daniel.
It doesn't appear that they've been entirely successful from what I can see (details below), but I appreciate that you've gone out of your way to try to fix this.
== Examples ==
After April 2012: The link http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikitech-l/2012-July/061691.html was posted on meta to reference a message of mine from July 2012. That ID (061691) had to be changed to 061614 after the rebuild from 2 weeks ago (i.e. a translation of -77). After yesterday's rebuild, it's now at ID 061621 (a translation of +7 consistent with the 7 empty messages you've reinserted).
Before April 2012: The link http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikitech-l/2004-February/008418.html was posted recently on wiki to reference the 2004 server move from San Diego to Tampa. That link now points to an unrelated message. I've tried a translation of -77 but I don't think that's the original message either (there are several messages from Feb. 2004 about the server move).
So, it appears that the archives have been corrupted inconsistently besides the simple translations of -77 or -7. Someone can probably verify that with other links (e.g. from the Signpost pages).
This is also consistent with the fact, pointed out by MZMcBride, that the August 2012 archive page contains several "No subject" messages that clearly don't belong there They've had their headers removed, and they have IDs like 001363 or 004210 (that would roughly put them around November 2002 and May 2003 respectively).
The conclusion is that the archives have probably been irrevocably corrupted and that we'll have to fix all links manually (we can't use a bot since there is no consistent translation of IDs).