I was just wondering if something changed in the way that the hosting credits work here... because I'm pretty sure that I had enough credits to last a few more days, cause I built up a bunch the last time I was here... but since I noticed that I haven't gotten many hits today, I checked my site to see if it was still up and running. That tends to be how I see if I need to get back over here and posting.

Well, I can understand if I ran out of points, cause it certainly wouldn't be the first time... but what's getting me is that my site has been down less than a day and it's already at -15 days of hosting credits. Isn't this more than usual? I thought it only went down to -4 when you run out. Maybe it's just me? I'm not sure... or is the default number that it's going to now? I searched the forums to see if I could find anywhere that mentioned a change like this, but couldn't find anything about recent changes.

It worries me that it's going in the minuses so fast, that my site might disappear all together if I had missed it for just a little longer. Anyone have any ideas to ease my mind about the seemingly super-speedy loss of credits? -15 days in just 9 hours of being down?

Well from my understanding the spam forum was pruned today and so anyone who had posts there lost credits, right now only few people have lost a few credits, but who posted a lot in spam related topics lost a lot of credits today. Hopefully a more detail explanation will be given about this later.

Well, it's good to know how it happened. But I hope that it didn't affect people so much by losing many many credits. Perhaps if this is the case, they should cap the number of credits to lose? I'm trying to build up 15 days worth of posts here (plus the 4 days needed on top of that to get unsuspended...) and if that's all cause the forums got pruned, it seems a bit much. Especially when I didn't think I was posting spam topics - I rarely post topics anyway. Though maybe I replied to a topic later moved to the spam bin, but if I thought it was spam, I probably wouldn't have posted in it.

Would have been nice for a little warning first though about what happened. Like when I was searching the forums earlier to figure out what happened, finding a topic saying something to the effect of 'We're going to prune the spam forums today, so if you notice a drop in credits - not to worry, it just means that any posts you had in that forum have been removed' would have really eased my mind over things.

Anyway, thanks for filling us in about what you know!

Midnightvamp, and others who might have a question about the "missing credits, should be patient until an Admin can sort things out and respond to the inevitable questions which will arise.
And Members were not the only ones affected. Mods got hit with this Pruning process as well.
The basics are that if you start a Topic, or reply to one, and that Topic gets sent to the Spam Bucket, well, that Bucket got 'pruned' today, so those credits earned are now gone.
The lesson attached to this procedure would be that instead of responding to Spammy Topics, use the Report button to submit a request for review to the Mod Team. We all know and recognize what a Spammy Topic is, and have tools to find plagiarism postings, too, so remember: when in doubt, do not respond to a potentially Spammy Topic.

Yea, it just sort of freaked me out a bit when I came on and the credits were unexpectedly lower than I thought they would be, I took a quick search around to see if it was just me, and since I didn't see anyone mention it, I thought I'd make a post to figure out what happened. Now that I know what happened, I'm patient to wait - it's just a little unnerving to see such a thing and then not see anyone else mentioning anything like that happening to them as well. It wasn't until I'd posted my topic that people had started talking about it in the shoutbox, so I guess I must have come to the forums right at the time it happened.

So, thanks as always to you for your insights on the matter

Yeah people have been asking all day about it, actually I was the one who started the who, what, where, why, and how this morning about what is up with the credits and then each explanation came up for every person that asked what happen to their credits and so answer was patch together with the help of haslip and some other inquiries of mine on what is up. Heck some people got put in the negative by this which surprises me that I haven't seen posts from those with suspended sites.

Yea, I would have thought there'd have already been a thread or two from people like me... that ended up suspended today. Would make sense to want to get some extra credits and figure out what was going on at the same time. Kill two birds with one stone so to speak. I feel so devious that I'm building up my credits by trying to solve the big mystery I guess the other people were all asking in the shoutbox earlier? I probably should have done that, but I needed the credits, and was thinking it was just my problem lol

Ah well, you live, you learn

Well, i'm glad to know why my credits are missing, and will definitely make sure I no longer post in spammy topics as it almost cost me a suspension. Thanks for the information, I had no idea I would lose credits for posting relevant posts in a semi-spammy thread.