Warning about your inbox on Dreamwidth

[kathryn_scannell]

I just had a very special experience. Yesterday I tried to delete a message from my inbox and suddenly *EVERYTHING* in it was gone. I filed a support request, and was told that perhaps I'd accidentally clicked on a select all box instead of the individual message. I'm reasonably sure I didn't but of course there's no way to tell. AND NO WAY TO GET ANYTHING BACK. Nada. So sorry. Perhaps you still have the copies sent to your email address.

I'm cautious, and believe in backups, so I do, but I thought I'd just pass on a warning about this to my friends here who may be less cautious. If you have messages you care about, forward them somewhere else and back them up. 

Oh, and if you sent me a message recently that may have been in the 9 unread messages that I never even got to see, I apologize for not replying.

I have to say I'm surprised and disappointed by this. A mail system where you can nuke everything with 2 mouse clicks in the and not get so much as a warning message saying "Hey, you're about to delete your entire mailbox? Are you sure you meant to do that?" Even Microsoft does a better job of user interface than that. Not to mention that all the big players (Microsoft, Yahoo, Gmail) have an undelete option.

Now I'm wondering if Live Journal handles this any better. Time to go check.

Comments

[zarhooie]

LJ doesn't handle it better than DW does; the Inbox code is inherited from them.

I understand your frustration. Believe me, I do. The problem is that if we can't replicate the error, we can't file a bug. Were you doing anything at all out of the ordinary?

[kathryn_scannell]

I'm reasonably sure I'd just clicked on the box next to the individual message, but at this point in the process I understand there's no way to know. I'm familiar enough with computer interfaces to know the difference between a selected everything box and a select this message box, but it's certainly possible I was fumble-fingered with my mouse. Because the message in question was a weekly update, and was open, it filled the screen, so if any other messages were accidentally selected they weren't visible to alert me.

I'm more distressed by the lack of warning if I had clicked on everything before it was irrevocably gone, and by the lack of an undo feature. It's been years since I've encountered a message system that didn't have one, and it never even occurred to me that there might not be one. It's practically a universal feature of mail and message systems these days.

I'd like to really strongly recommend that you look at incorporating both of those features in future code improvements. I can't imagine hat I'm the only user that has burned themselves this way.

[zarhooie]

Shortly after I read this entry, I noticed someone else on my rlist had done the same thing. While I can't replicate, I do think there may be some sort of glitchiness in the system that is coming up in edge cases (hence the unduplicatablility, if that's even a word).

How does this sound: I'll file a bug for the sometimes-all-messages-get-deleted problem, and you file a Suggestion to add an undo feature or at the very least a confirmation "yes, you really want to delete everything" popup. Fair?

[kathryn_scannell]

Sounds like a good plan. Where do I file suggestions?

[zarhooie]

Aaactually: http://bugs.dwscoalition.org/show_bug.cgi?id=3847 and http://bugs.dwscoalition.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1577 address both your issues and went through Suggestions already. I'm filing a bug for your thing in about 10 seconds.... Done. :) http://bugs.dwscoalition.org/show_bug.cgi?id=4121

http://www.dreamwidth.org/site/suggest is where you suggest things. :)