Here’s one of those horrifying stories that serves as nightmare fuel for those of us who are passionate about photography:
Major, major stumble from Flickr today—a Zurich-based photoblogger says Flickr deleted his account by mistake and lost his 4,000 photos. Mirco Wilhelm has the original files saved elsewhere, but the photos from his extensive Flickr collection had been linked to from all over the web, including the official Flickr blog. Those links will now point to deadspace.
I also quite enjoy the apology e-mail that looks like it was written (very poorly) by a lowly support slave:
Unfortunately, I have mixed up the accounts and accidentally deleted yours. I am terribly sorry for this grave error and hope that this mistake can be reconciled. Here is what I can do from here:
I can restore your account, although we will not be able to retrieve your photos. I know that there is a lot of history on your account-again, please accept my apology for my negligence. Once I restore your account, I will add four years of free Pro to make up for my error.
Please let me know if there’s anything else I can do.
Again, I am deeply sorry for this mistake.
Both photographer and account deleter must have had a really, really bad day.
Update: Apparently, Flickr has restored Wilhelm’s account and given him 25 free years of Flickr Pro. Also, they’re extremely sorry about this mixup, y’know.