It MIGHT be just my computer, but strange things seem to be going on. ALL the comments have disappeared from ALL the "shared works" except for the last one. I happen to know that SOME of the writers of those "shared works" haven't read the latest comments posted.
Has a former worker at Bloomsbury - who had the password to the administration of this site and was fired - decided to take revenge by deleting all this material? Are they now reading this and laughing? There's no need to take out your bad feeling on us writers! WE didn't fire you.
Or has a hacker from another publisher decided to throw a spanner into the works here?
There was a lot of good advice on there (as well as some bad), just vanished into thin air (hopefully not forever).
As I wrote, this might just be a technical problem with my computer. Is anybody/everybody else having the same problem?
@ Toni: Only Admin (or a saboteur) can delete an original question or any comment on either Q&A or "shared work". You can edit your own "shared work" and - I suppose - delete it if you choose to do so.
You are apparently now in the unique position of being the only writer on this site with visible comments on your "shared work". That situation may not last for long... I advise you to copy and store any advice given if you wish to keep it.
@ Adrian ("I'm sure that there is also an option to delete posts that are days, a week, a month or six months old. [...] Of course, an administrator could have accidentally deleted the answers in the shared work section.")
This appears to be progressive. I looked at a "shared work" that nobody had commented on for 2 years. A few minutes later, I returned and all the comments had disappeared. But comments on all other "shared work" were still visible (as far as I can remember). Then, a few hours later, the rest of the comments on all "shared works" had disappeared. This seems more like somebody systematically going through the site and deleting all comments, rather than an administrative accident.
Unless there's a huge overload on the database, past comments shouldn't be erased, because many of them are still pertinent and could be useful for new users.
If there IS an overload, I can see the point in erasing Q&As from years ago [NOT comments on "shared work", because authors may need to go back and remind themselves of a helpful piece of advice], but the Q&As seem to be intact. At least... I have just carried out a check, going back 80 pages: that's 800 Q&As. Here's the result: https://www.writersandartists.co.uk/question/view/1585
Last comment on 14th March 2014. And it's still there.
And yet comments on "shared works" which were posted YESTERDAY have disappeared. This is NOT a case of responsible Admin clearing necessary space on the database. If they WERE to do so, they would have warned us, so that we could have stored interesting comments on our computers.
This is EITHER an accident (which I doubt) or sabotage.
I suspect there will be more than one administrator to this site.
There should be an option in the control panel to save the database, but the database will keep growing the more the site is used. I'm sure that there is also an option to delete posts that are days, a week, a month or six months old.
Obviously the site has thousands of hits. From time to time an administrator should delete the cache to help to enable the site to run smoothly and quickly, but that shouldn't affect the answers to posts.
Of course, an administrator could have accidently deleted the answers in the shared work section.