# How quickly and in what sequence was The Great Banning discovered and corrected? **URL:** \ **Category:** About This Message Board\ **Created:** [April 14, 2016, 6:12am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-quickly-and-in-what-sequence-was-the-great-banning-discovered-and-corrected/752169 "2016-04-14T06:12:42Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Leo\_Bloom](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/leo_bloom/32/10377_2.png) [@Leo\_Bloom](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Leo_Bloom)\ **Post date:** [April 14, 2016, 6:12am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-quickly-and-in-what-sequence-was-the-great-banning-discovered-and-corrected/752169/1 "2016-04-14T06:12:42Z")
A while back a [del]mad with power with insane glint in his eye[/del] mod banned everybody by mistake. I’m honestly interested to learn ATMB: how it was first reported–by the mod himself, as an “oops?”–, how messages were received and passed around and the situation attended to among mods and Admin(s) in the very first moments of a crisis. ---
**Author:** ![Senegoid](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/senegoid/32/6606_2.png) [@Senegoid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Senegoid)\ **Post date:** [April 14, 2016, 4:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-quickly-and-in-what-sequence-was-the-great-banning-discovered-and-corrected/752169/2 "2016-04-14T16:14:19Z")
I see the makings here for a made-for-TV slasher thriller movie. Are you sure that enough time has passed that The Story Can Now Be Told? ---
**Author:** ![Czarcasm](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/czarcasm/32/4050_2.png) [@Czarcasm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Czarcasm)\ **Post date:** [April 14, 2016, 4:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-quickly-and-in-what-sequence-was-the-great-banning-discovered-and-corrected/752169/3 "2016-04-14T16:22:40Z")
> [@Senegoid](#): > > I see the makings here for a made-for-TV slasher thriller movie. > > Are you sure that enough time has passed that The Story Can Now Be Told? In the movies, when questions start getting asked about things best left buried, people that were around at the time start dropping like ---
**Author:** ![running\_coach](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/running_coach/32/15836_2.png) [@running\_coach](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/running_coach)\ **Post date:** [April 14, 2016, 5:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-quickly-and-in-what-sequence-was-the-great-banning-discovered-and-corrected/752169/4 "2016-04-14T17:44:21Z")
[This thread](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=623315&highlight=Marley23) announcing **Marley’s** promotion has a gap from 6:24a to 8:46a (Pacific) with **Giraffe** getting in the first dig. [This thread](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=623367&highlight=Marley23) for everyone after the return. ---
**Author:** ![running\_coach](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/running_coach/32/15836_2.png) [@running\_coach](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/running_coach)\ **Post date:** [April 14, 2016, 5:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-quickly-and-in-what-sequence-was-the-great-banning-discovered-and-corrected/752169/5 "2016-04-14T17:56:01Z")
[The thread](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=623616) where we decided how to refer to[whisper]What **Marley** did.[/whisper] Credit to **silenus** for coming up with that one. ---
**Author:** ![Leo\_Bloom](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/leo_bloom/32/10377_2.png) [@Leo\_Bloom](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Leo_Bloom)\ **Post date:** [April 14, 2016, 7:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-quickly-and-in-what-sequence-was-the-great-banning-discovered-and-corrected/752169/6 "2016-04-14T19:25:10Z")
Thank you. ---
**Author:** ![Leo\_Bloom](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/leo_bloom/32/10377_2.png) [@Leo\_Bloom](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Leo_Bloom)\ **Post date:** [April 14, 2016, 8:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-quickly-and-in-what-sequence-was-the-great-banning-discovered-and-corrected/752169/7 "2016-04-14T20:29:21Z")
By Serendipity: What Might Have Been, or Marley’s Not So Bad, or something, this just happened. It’s been picked up by major dailies: ([http://serverfault.com/questions/769357/recovering-from-a-rm-rf](http://serverfault.com/questions/769357/recovering-from-a-rm-rf))\*\*Recovering from a rm -rf / \*\*[duplicate] […] I run a small hosting provider with more or less 1535 customers and I use Ansible to automate some operations to be run on all servers. Last night I accidentally ran, on all servers, a Bash script with a rm -rf {foo}/{bar} with those variables undefined due to a bug in the code above this line. All servers got deleted and the offsite backups too because the remote storage was mounted just before by the same script (that is a backup maintenance script). How I can recover from a rm -rf / now in a timely manner? centos7 data-recovery share edited Apr 11 at 9:58 […] asked Apr 10 at 22:25 […] locked by Sven♦ Apr 11 at 11:26 This post has been locked due to the high amount of off-topic comments generated. For extended discussions, please use chat. […] This question has been asked before and already has an answer. If those answers do not fully address your question, please ask a new question. [first comment:] If you really don’t have any backups I am sorry to say but you just nuked your entire company. [snip] ---
**Author:** ![Senegoid](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/senegoid/32/6606_2.png) [@Senegoid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Senegoid)\ **Post date:** [April 15, 2016, 1:16am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-quickly-and-in-what-sequence-was-the-great-banning-discovered-and-corrected/752169/8 "2016-04-15T01:16:33Z")
You know how they recover from **rm -rf**? They call the Sysadmin, that’s how. Yeah, me. The guy who does the daily back-ups, y’know, and drives them across town to some safe off-site place. Then I get to make an extra-special trip there again to pick up the tapes, and run the restore to put Humpty Dumpty back in his place again. Oh wait – Did I tell you about the day we upgraded from BSD 4.2 to 4.3? With the all new file system structure? So we had to re-partition and re-format our disks and reload everything from scratch? And then we discovered that the 4.3 restore program couldn’t restore 4.2 back-up tapes? Yeah, that really happened. ---
**Author:** ![carnivorousplant](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/carnivorousplant/32/3563_2.png) [@carnivorousplant](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/carnivorousplant)\ **Post date:** [April 15, 2016, 1:24am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-quickly-and-in-what-sequence-was-the-great-banning-discovered-and-corrected/752169/9 "2016-04-15T01:24:00Z")
> [@Senegoid](#): > > Oh wait – Did I tell you about the day we upgraded from BSD 4.2 to 4.3? With the all new file system structure? So we had to re-partition and re-format our disks and reload everything from scratch? And then we discovered that the 4.3 restore program couldn’t restore 4.2 back-up tapes? Jesus. ---
**Author:** ![Cabin\_Fever\_1](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/cabin_fever_1/32/2908_2.png) [@Cabin\_Fever\_1](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cabin_Fever_1)\ **Post date:** [April 15, 2016, 12:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-quickly-and-in-what-sequence-was-the-great-banning-discovered-and-corrected/752169/10 "2016-04-15T12:15:18Z")
> [@Senegoid](#): > > Oh wait – Did I tell you about the day we upgraded from BSD 4.2 to 4.3? With the all new file system structure? So we had to re-partition and re-format our disks and reload everything from scratch? And then we discovered that the 4.3 restore program couldn’t restore 4.2 back-up tapes? This is why I am happily enjoying my retirement, planting vegetables, walking the dog, answering the phone without dread. You know…a normal life. Finally. 😃 ---
**Author:** ![carnivorousplant](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/carnivorousplant/32/3563_2.png) [@carnivorousplant](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/carnivorousplant)\ **Post date:** [April 15, 2016, 12:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-quickly-and-in-what-sequence-was-the-great-banning-discovered-and-corrected/752169/11 "2016-04-15T12:55:56Z")
> [@Cabin\_Fever](#): > > answering the phone without dread. You know…a normal life. Finally. 😃 I envy you, Sir. ---
**Author:** ![Cabin\_Fever\_1](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/cabin_fever_1/32/2908_2.png) [@Cabin\_Fever\_1](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cabin_Fever_1)\ **Post date:** [April 15, 2016, 10:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-quickly-and-in-what-sequence-was-the-great-banning-discovered-and-corrected/752169/12 "2016-04-15T22:04:26Z")
Not to throw kerosene on an already lit fire…the original question remains unanswered. We need back-of-the-stage insights. I am about to re-up my membership, but will hold off until this pressing mystery resolves itself. (Poor Marley, forever getting teased. My sympathies. However, as an aside – been there, done that). ---
**Author:** ![74westy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/74westy/32/3950_2.png) [@74westy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/74westy)\ **Post date:** [April 15, 2016, 11:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-quickly-and-in-what-sequence-was-the-great-banning-discovered-and-corrected/752169/13 "2016-04-15T23:05:56Z")
> [@Cabin\_Fever](#): > > Not to throw kerosene on an already lit fire…the original question remains unanswered. > We need back-of-the-stage insights. I am about to re-up my membership, but will hold off until this pressing mystery resolves itself. > > (Poor Marley, forever getting teased. My sympathies. However, as an aside – been there, done that). I bet Hal Briston wishes he got teased like Marley. ---
**Author:** ![Francis\_Vaughan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/francis_vaughan/32/3093_2.png) [@Francis\_Vaughan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Francis_Vaughan)\ **Post date:** [April 16, 2016, 1:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-quickly-and-in-what-sequence-was-the-great-banning-discovered-and-corrected/752169/14 "2016-04-16T13:58:09Z")
As a matter of semantics - users get banned and IP addresses get banned, but one assumes these are different things, yes? So the great banning was more a slip specifying an IP address or similar, not a wild card applied to the user base? I can certainly see how a single slip could suddenly add every possible IP address to an exclusion rule. ---
**Author:** ![Leo\_Bloom](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/leo_bloom/32/10377_2.png) [@Leo\_Bloom](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Leo_Bloom)\ **Post date:** [April 16, 2016, 3:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-quickly-and-in-what-sequence-was-the-great-banning-discovered-and-corrected/752169/15 "2016-04-16T15:51:15Z")
From my reading of the threads cited at top by **running coach** –arguably the funniest bunch ever to appear in ATMB–three things fall out: As a matter of member relations **TubaDiva** cleaned up the mess, no easy task. **Marley23** , whose _first day it was_ (I had forgotten that, which makes it all the more awesome), said (no cite, but I believe I remember correctly) “I was banning some limited range [? not sure if he used that word] of guys in India.” After that, more or less, that’s-my-story-and-I’m-sticking-to-it–although he wasn’t really challenged of course–and that it was being investigated. Since it was quickly undone, most everybody got with the next stage of the program, pummeling Marley with abandon. One poster only, IIRC, followed up facetiously as an SDMB truther, demanding moment-to-moment memos–not really what I’m interested in here (and not demanding, of course). And, although it must be (right?) that the technical info beyond the doomed foray into Indian IPs has been explored in ATMB (we have a lot of IT geeks as posters who are interested in general), and if you have an SD cite, fire away. I’m just kind of interested in the sequence of events and with whom–their names because a lot of us know them and it’s just telling war stories, but also, as I say in OP, how the crisis unfolded, to whom/how the severity of the situation was revealed. ---
**Author:** ![Leo\_Bloom](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/leo_bloom/32/10377_2.png) [@Leo\_Bloom](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Leo_Bloom)\ **Post date:** [April 16, 2016, 4:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-quickly-and-in-what-sequence-was-the-great-banning-discovered-and-corrected/752169/16 "2016-04-16T16:02:25Z")
> [@Cabin\_Fever](#): > > …I am about to re-up my membership, but will hold off until this pressing mystery resolves itself… That’s a new one. See–here’s one guy who’s cool about the new pop-under ads. ---
**Author:** ![Cabin\_Fever\_1](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/cabin_fever_1/32/2908_2.png) [@Cabin\_Fever\_1](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cabin_Fever_1)\ **Post date:** [April 16, 2016, 4:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-quickly-and-in-what-sequence-was-the-great-banning-discovered-and-corrected/752169/17 "2016-04-16T16:30:48Z")
> [@Leo\_Bloom](#): > > That’s a new one. See–here’s one guy who’s cool about the new pop-under ads. I click on all the advertisements. Just doing my share to keep this board alive. Yes, I am easily entertained. Plus I get to explore the wonderful world of click-bait. 😃 I need a new life. Or a new profession. ---
**Author:** ![Senegoid](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/senegoid/32/6606_2.png) [@Senegoid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Senegoid)\ **Post date:** [April 17, 2016, 4:25am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-quickly-and-in-what-sequence-was-the-great-banning-discovered-and-corrected/752169/18 "2016-04-17T04:25:03Z")
> [@Cabin\_Fever](#): > > I click on all the advertisements. Just doing my share to keep this board alive. Back in the earlier days of Gmail, when the naive among us still had faith that Google wasn’t evil, I used to do that also with the little highly non-intrusive ads that Google showed me. But one day I fiddled with some of my Gmail settings (I think I set it to display in bare-bones HTML mode), and – well, well what don’t I see? I don’t see any more ads – Google just quit showing ads when I set it to display my mail in HTML mode. Go figure. ---
**Author:** ![Cartooniverse](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/cartooniverse/32/3084_2.png) [@Cartooniverse](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cartooniverse)\ **Post date:** [April 18, 2016, 3:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-quickly-and-in-what-sequence-was-the-great-banning-discovered-and-corrected/752169/19 "2016-04-18T15:00:28Z")
> [@74westy](#): > > I bet Hal Briston wishes he got teased like Marley. He pulled the wool over all of our eyes… ---
**Author:** ![74westy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/74westy/32/3950_2.png) [@74westy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/74westy)\ **Post date:** [April 18, 2016, 6:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-quickly-and-in-what-sequence-was-the-great-banning-discovered-and-corrected/752169/20 "2016-04-18T18:13:05Z")
> [@Cartooniverse](#): > > He pulled the wool over all of our eyes… Yeah. We were fleeced! [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-quickly-and-in-what-sequence-was-the-great-banning-discovered-and-corrected/752169.md?page=2)