FYI in case anyone else thought this was a vBulletin bug

[filburt1]

Also edit your profile immediately to change your website to something appropriate.

[Freddie Bingham]

Today at 04:20 PM Jethro said this in Post #6
I'm not sure what you are on about here. We have added exactly two table fields in the course of development. Hard coding what should be variable data is considered extremely bad coding practise in any language. Do some reading as to the reasoning behind it I would suggest some of Fabian Pascal's stuff, who's one of those relational db experts that keep us all informed of normalisation, though l am at a bit of a head scratching stage with seventh normal form. Don't know, if some one else could explain it that would be cool.

Hey when you graduate go to college young man. Keg parties and co-eds and all that....

In real life practice, normalization often does not result in the best performance. Trade offs have to be made when you do not have infinite cpu processing time.

Today at 11:18 AM filburt1 said this in Post #10
I know. But, as I'm reiterating for the third time, most hacks that are in the data-per-user genre do not integrate with vB's user removal system and therefore are not cleaned up when a user is deleted.

Er that would be a simple hack to the software dude, any competent PHP coder could do it for you, if you require help with it.

Freddie, l code with IBM databases which have something called virtual fields which gets around the trade offs, not sure of the MySQL equivalent. Any database that is not at least at 2nd normal form runs the risk of redundant data, and conflicting data for the same value. Generally l go to third normal form, but not much beyond.

All of this is off track as the board in question has in fact removed several people without this being a problem. Just had confirmation of that fact from a member at another technical site.

So one is left bemused by this statement, clearly an Admin is concerned that once one person gets removed a lot of other people will want to be removed.

Of interest asked the folks over at bbAdmins their views on removing member accounts from their boards, response so far is 100% they do so. Equally none of the vBulletin users report any problems with doing this, and as some of these guys run huge boards would image they may include some of the hacks which poise a problem apparently.

[filburt1]

My reasons for not removing users are my own, and this technical issue is one of the many I've outlined. Please keep this thread related to the technical aspects.

Actually this did start in chat, some one has clearly moved it.

Do you need help with your PHP code to get your hack working correctly with the delete members option. Our tech admin Chris is a PHP guru and would be more than pleased to help, as he has fixed a similar problem for us. Just offering.

[filburt1]

Yes, I moved it because it was related to vBulletin.

I have professional programming experience with PHP myself; not to sound offensive but you don't have to make me sound like an idiot...However, as you do not know how I have WDF configured internally (it is way more complex than it looks), it would not be worth my effort to peruse the code to fix any problems, let alone publish those fixes to the dozens of free and for sale hacks I've produced.

Well, it seems both unbelieveable and highly unlikely that the technical issues raised bythe board in question, would in fact be true.

I find it hard to believe that someone with professed PHP and MySQL skills at such a high level would have any difficulty with the removal of member accounts. Given that the technical reasons are not impossible to get around (far from it in fact, given that the board has deleted several member accounts in the past without apparent problem)

If that is not the case, then that leads one to only several conclusions....

1. The Admin choses not to remove the accounts because it would truly reflect the state of said board, and not reflect well on him.

2. The Admin has a perculiar and persistent grudge against the individual members and won't remove them out of spite.

3. The Admin has a very poor understanding of his legal obligation to remove people from lists whereby email is sent to members and individuals...upon request.

4. The Admin does not realise he is in breach of Federal US misrepresentation laws, whereby, he is misrepresenting people as being members of his forum, when they are not, have never been members of his current forum....And then bans them when they come online to request removal???


Any way you look at it, it is completely unprofessional and irresponsible behaviour from supposed "professionals" (as the staff members of the board in question claim to be) if any member of my staff acted that way they would be removed immediately from staff and from the forums.

[martinjwallace]

Does MySQL not have cascading updates? (I'm an MSSQL man myself).

If it did then it would be a trivial task to make sure data consistency was secured.

As it is, surely it is only a few minutes job to set up an SQL script that would delete all references to a particular ID from a database.

[filburt1]

Sorry, but as this is in no way related to vBulletin in general but one specific site, thread closed.

(Martin, please post your question in a separate thread )