When will pre-crash census data be visible again?

[Tinhampton]

All national census data from February 2016 (when this sort of data started to be published, as part of the Fast Issues update) up until the server crash in April 2024 is still invisible, almost six months after we went back online. Examples of this can be seen on my WA Endorsements trend page and Kyupaa's Population trend page, both of which have April 25th as their first data point. (However, regional population history graphs have all data available.)

There was some concern about this a few months after the crash, but site staff did not say anything except to clarify that the data would be visible again one day. Do we have an ETA on this or are Elu, Aav and friends still working on it?

[Sedgistan]

We have the data, but we're waiting for admin time to get it restored, as it's not a simple task (a previous attempt was made but ran into issues -- it is possible though, just complex). There's no ETA on that.

[Vylixan]

Not all census data is invisible, nations that were CTE at the time of the crash don't have this problem.
For example: https://www.nationstates.net/nation=rot ... ensusid=86

[Enzonar]

Is the crash also the reason for every nation having a default flag?

[Refuge Isle]

Is the crash also the reason for every nation having a default flag?

Every nation does not have a default flag...

[The Ice States]

Something I noticed a while ago is also that dispatch views were reset; for example I don't think these dispatches with 10+ upvotes were only ever read once.

[United Calanworie]

That is correct

[Tinhampton]

Pile-on, but this dispatch shows as not having been edited even though I did edit it, a lot, between June 2023 and the crash.

[The Galactic Empire of Zimbabwae2]

Not all census data is invisible, nations that were CTE at the time of the crash don't have this problem.
For example: https://www.nationstates.net/nation=rot ... ensusid=86

That's interesting. I couldn't find any info on why some nations still had their data.

What would be the technical reason for why nations that were CTE didn't have this problem?

I thought that redundant systems worked to keep entire backups at specific points in time, so I'm not seeing why this would happen? Though I am sure there is some technical reason

[Eluvatar]

Not all census data is invisible, nations that were CTE at the time of the crash don't have this problem.
For example: https://www.nationstates.net/nation=rot ... ensusid=86

That's interesting. I couldn't find any info on why some nations still had their data.

What would be the technical reason for why nations that were CTE didn't have this problem?

I thought that redundant systems worked to keep entire backups at specific points in time, so I'm not seeing why this would happen? Though I am sure there is some technical reason

The reason is that when a nation CTEs, its census history is removed from the database and archived outside of it to save space.

This reason is also part of why restoring the census_history from the pre-crash database is a little tricky. We need to deal with the census history of the nations which have CTEd since April 2024.

But we made some progress in that direction yesterday and I'm cautiously optimistic that we can restore most of the the data sometime in the next few weeks (a few censuses - liberal, conservative, apathetic, business, wealth gaps, and advanced - we'll have to come back to as their database files are more messed up).

[Eluvatar]

Scratch weeks, say months. We made some progress yesterday, though.

We still need to double check that our code and plan is going to work but expect visible movement on this soon-ish. May involve downtime.

[Vylixan]

Awesome news!
Slow and steady wins the day .

[Eluvatar]

We'd been unable to get back to this for some months, but I can report some progress again. It will certainly take at at least some weeks, but hopefully I'll be able to give an update with a more specific timeline sometime in the next couple weeks.