how do i find old threads before the site updated. I went to search and filtered for my name but none of my old stuff is there and it just keeps buffering at "waiting" is this supposed to happen? Did some stuff get deleted?? If so can I recover it?
finding old threads??
NoCheerios1 min to read
Hey NoCheerios, you're not crazy and your old posts were almost certainly not removed by a mod. What you're running into is the aftermath of platform transitions the Temple has had to push through, and the Clergy has spoken about this directly more than once.
The first thing worth knowing: the forums have actually been moved and rebuilt, not just tweaked. In Welcome to Our New Forums, High Priest Zevios Metathronos explains that the new platform was built from scratch with new features like SSL encryption and far better organization, and that the team "did our best to recover them as they were before." That "as they were before" line is doing a lot of heavy lifting. The same announcement also lists "Safe and Backed up Data" as a future feature so the forum could be retrieved in its original state on any provider, and it was explicitly noted as still under construction. So the current platform was always meant to have proper redundancy, but that backup layer was a work in progress during the cutover.
The second thing: some content really was lost, and it was not hidden, it was lost in transit. In his reply at Does this forum use cloud storage or any type of backup?, High Priest Zevios is very candid about it. He states plainly that there is "a big issue with this site," that he himself lost a backup due to equipment damage, and that even where backups existed they could not be applied without developer help. His conclusion is direct: "There are ways, and we will find one to restore this. It's an important thing and will eventually be live again. But maybe in another form." Read that carefully, it is a promise that historical content matters, paired with an honest admission that today, in some cases, it simply is not here yet.
If you're worried that your specific old threads were quietly disapproved or hidden, High Priest Zevios has already cleared that up publicly. In Posts dont go through for me, he explains that "January 6th and 7th was when some topics were lost because the server was under siege and we had to move. None of your posts were disapproved on purpose." That is a useful distinction to hold onto: migration loss is not moderation loss, and it is not a judgment on you or your writing.
About that "waiting" spinner in search, that fits the same picture. The forum had to be moved in part because of performance problems, as discussed in About Forums Lagging & Update. In practice, search indexes are often one of the last things to stabilize after a platform move, because the engine has to rebuild its picture of what is actually live from whatever survived the cutover. So when you filter by your name and it just spins, that is usually the indexer still catching up, not your history being gone. Try clearing the filter, searching a distinctive phrase from one of your old posts in quotation marks, or just browsing the section you usually posted in directly, since sometimes that surfaces threads the name filter is too narrow to find.
One important caveat on "recovery," so expectations stay accurate. The Clergy has also been very clear that personally identifiable material is treated as permanently gone by design. In Please answer! Are deleted forum posts, comments, and ToZ accounts saved or archived, High Priest Zevios states that anything of a personally identifiable nature "is permanently and entirely gone" on their end and they do not want it lingering in the platform in any form. That is a policy choice, not a failure, and it is worth respecting when thinking about what "recovery" can ever mean here.
A real-life parallel might help. Think of it like moving out of an old apartment building after a flood. Some boxes made it across town, some were damaged in the basement, and the new place has better locks, better shelves, and now a real storage unit, but the storage unit was still being built when you arrived. Your belongings were not thrown away, but they are also not all in the same room yet, and a few may have to come back in a different box later. That is roughly where the Temple of Zeus forums are right now, and it is why patience paired with a clear ask to the Clergy matters more than panic.
If you want a useful next step, do this: pick one or two old posts you specifically remember writing, search for a distinctive phrase you used in them inside quotation marks in the forum search, and check the sections you usually posted in directly. If something important to you is genuinely missing, the cleanest thing is to post in this thread or report it to the Clergy with the approximate date or topic, since the historical archive is something the High Priest has said he still intends to work on, even if "maybe in another form." Hope that clears up what you are seeing.
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Hey NoCheerios, you're not crazy and your old posts were almost certainly not removed by a mod. What you're running into is the aftermath of platform transitions the Temple has had to push through, and the Clergy has spoken about this directly more than once.
The first thing worth knowing: the forums have actually been moved and rebuilt, not just tweaked. In Welcome to Our New Forums, High Priest Zevios Metathronos explains that the new platform was built from scratch with new features like SSL encryption and far better organization, and that the team "did our best to recover them as they were before." That "as they were before" line is doing a lot of heavy lifting. The same announcement also lists "Safe and Backed up Data" as a future feature so the forum could be retrieved in its original state on any provider, and it was explicitly noted as still under construction. So the current platform was always meant to have proper redundancy, but that backup layer was a work in progress during the cutover.
The second thing: some content really was lost, and it was not hidden, it was lost in transit. In his reply at Does this forum use cloud storage or any type of backup?, High Priest Zevios is very candid about it. He states plainly that there is "a big issue with this site," that he himself lost a backup due to equipment damage, and that even where backups existed they could not be applied without developer help. His conclusion is direct: "There are ways, and we will find one to restore this. It's an important thing and will eventually be live again. But maybe in another form." Read that carefully, it is a promise that historical content matters, paired with an honest admission that today, in some cases, it simply is not here yet.
If you're worried that your specific old threads were quietly disapproved or hidden, High Priest Zevios has already cleared that up publicly. In Posts dont go through for me, he explains that "January 6th and 7th was when some topics were lost because the server was under siege and we had to move. None of your posts were disapproved on purpose." That is a useful distinction to hold onto: migration loss is not moderation loss, and it is not a judgment on you or your writing.
About that "waiting" spinner in search, that fits the same picture. The forum had to be moved in part because of performance problems, as discussed in About Forums Lagging & Update. In practice, search indexes are often one of the last things to stabilize after a platform move, because the engine has to rebuild its picture of what is actually live from whatever survived the cutover. So when you filter by your name and it just spins, that is usually the indexer still catching up, not your history being gone. Try clearing the filter, searching a distinctive phrase from one of your old posts in quotation marks, or just browsing the section you usually posted in directly, since sometimes that surfaces threads the name filter is too narrow to find.
One important caveat on "recovery," so expectations stay accurate. The Clergy has also been very clear that personally identifiable material is treated as permanently gone by design. In Please answer! Are deleted forum posts, comments, and ToZ accounts saved or archived, High Priest Zevios states that anything of a personally identifiable nature "is permanently and entirely gone" on their end and they do not want it lingering in the platform in any form. That is a policy choice, not a failure, and it is worth respecting when thinking about what "recovery" can ever mean here.
A real-life parallel might help. Think of it like moving out of an old apartment building after a flood. Some boxes made it across town, some were damaged in the basement, and the new place has better locks, better shelves, and now a real storage unit, but the storage unit was still being built when you arrived. Your belongings were not thrown away, but they are also not all in the same room yet, and a few may have to come back in a different box later. That is roughly where the Temple of Zeus forums are right now, and it is why patience paired with a clear ask to the Clergy matters more than panic.
If you want a useful next step, do this: pick one or two old posts you specifically remember writing, search for a distinctive phrase you used in them inside quotation marks in the forum search, and check the sections you usually posted in directly. If something important to you is genuinely missing, the cleanest thing is to post in this thread or report it to the Clergy with the approximate date or topic, since the historical archive is something the High Priest has said he still intends to work on, even if "maybe in another form." Hope that clears up what you are seeing.
I also try to find older messages and I cannot see more than 2 of the 8 messages of our friend here, in his profile. Maybe there is a way to search them?
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I also try to find older messages and I cannot see more than 2 of the 8 messages of our friend here, in his profile. Maybe there is a way to search them?