There was a software glitch affecting about 250 threads in General Discussion

[woo me with science]

51. Everyone, check your recs! This glitch is misattributing recommendations.

Last edited Wed Oct 29, 2014, 09:23 PM - Edit history (1)

Links to posts and threads that were deleted in the glitch now link to posts from 2011. Apparently, a rec given to a post that subsequently disappeared has instead now been applied to whatever thread the link goes to now.

Here's how I discovered it. While browsing "My Recommendations," I found that ten of the links to the fifteen most recent threads I recced were now mistitled and led to random threads. Then I realized that all those threads had recs from me!

These included threads I would never have recced, including a troll thread describing DU as "by far the worst website I have looked at lately" and a thread praising Obama as a populist.

I recommend that everyone check your rec lists and read the titles carefully, follow the links, and unrec whatever needs unreccing. Nobody here should risk having their name associated with a random post that may happen to be insensitive, bigoted, or reflective of political views they do not share.

Even worse, random posts come up that are clearly from the middle of threads, but they come up WITH a rec box but without any link to the OP. So...it appears you are reccing the post...but are you actually reccing an OP that isn't visible?

People should be aware of this so they can decide where they want their names attached and where they don't.

I hope the old threads will be back and easily findable soon so that re-recs can be made and our history here is intact. There were some excellent threads that deserve to be searchable and accessible to everyone.