Gaurav's dashboard

Hi guys, I'd like to add that we now have a version of Xmarks where this bug is fixed.

If you've already installed Xmarks, you'll need to follow rbdl's instructions to restore syncing to your own server.

If you haven't installed it yet, please install this new version that will keep your own server settings: http://jezebel.foxmarks.com/xmarks-3....

Hi BlahBlah and Pong,

I'm sorry that you guys don't like our new discovery features, but don't worry, you can opt-out of all of them. To disable discovery features, open Foxmarks Settings, click the Discovery button and un-check each feature that you don't wish to use.

It takes significant cost to run a team that ensures that millions of users of bookmarks remain backed up and synchronized at all times without the smallest glitches. It's also expensive to offer quick and efficient support for our customers, but we take pride in providing a valuable service with high quality customer support and an unbelievable price: free.

The discovery features certainly are intended to help us generate revenue to support our great free features, but building discovery features has also been the goal of our company since day one. We think there's great opportunity to help people find great content online based on the aggregated wisdom of millions and it's this goal of helping you discover better content that we are after. We understand that not everyone will want this, and so we provide an option for you to opt-out.

Cheers,
Gaurav

Hi thatmtnman, don't worry: bookmark data is only analyzed in aggregate meaning that bookmarks will never be personally identifiable with you. In addition, our discovery engine only surfaces websites that a sufficiently large number of people have bookmarked - so sites that only you are bookmarking will be ignored.

We take privacy very seriously and discuss these aspects in our privacy policy here: http://www.xmarks.com/about/privacy

We have always been transparent in our goal to aggregate bookmark data in our privacy policy. We delight in providing a reliable and fast sync and backup service that caters to millions of users, and are excited to use the wisdom of crowds to help these same people find great content online.

However, if you prefer to opt out of having your bookmarks included in this system, you will need to delete your Xmarks account. Instructions on how to do that are available here.

If you're reading this page, it's probably because Xmarks has detected that your set of bookmarks has recently gotten much smaller. If you've recently deleted a large number of bookmarks, there is likely nothing to worry about. You can close this window and click "OK" to allow Xmarks to continue synchronizing.

If you haven't recently deleted a large number of bookmarks, something may have gone wrong with your bookmark set. Xmarks displays a warning in order to allow you to determine whether there is a problem before you continue synchronizing, as synchronizing in this case could cause Xmarks to spread your damaged bookmarks to other computers.

Before you continue synchronizing, we strongly recommend that you examine your bookmarks either by opening the bookmarks menu in this browser window, or by opening the Bookmark Manager by clicking "Organize Bookmarks" ("Manage Bookmarks" in Firefox 1.5) in the bookmarks menu. If everything looks okay, you can close this window and click OK.

WHAT TO DO IF YOU SEE A PROBLEM

If you do see a problem with your bookmarks, don't fear: your bookmarks are likely to be recoverable. Here are some things you can do:

Download your bookmarks from the Xmarks Server

Log in at my.xmarks.com to examine your bookmarks as they exist on the Xmarks server. If they look okay, download them to your computer with the following steps:

1. Close this window.


2. Click Cancel on the Xmarks warning dialog.


3. Open the Xmarks Control Panel (Bookmarks -> Xmarks..., or else Tools -> Xmarks... -> Settings under version 2.0.xx)


4. Click the "Other" or "Advanced" tab.


5. Click "Download Now".


6. When a message appears asking you to confirm the overwrite of your local bookmarks, click "OK".

This will restore your bookmarks to match their state on the Xmarks server. Note that you will lose whatever bookmarks you had on this computer before the download, so you should only do that if the bookmarks on the server are everything that you need.

Recover from a Firefox Backup

If you cannot use the download feature above, the alternative is to recover your bookmarks from Firefox's backup. Firefox automatically maintains a set of bookmark backups for you, typically 5 days' worth. Instructions for recovering from these backups are available on the Mozilla site.

After you recover your bookmarks, you should immediately perform an upload with the following steps:

1. Open the Xmarks Control Panel (Bookmarks -> Xmarks..., or Tools -> Xmarks... -> Settings under version 2.0.xx)


2. Click the "Other" or "Advanced" tab.


3. Click "Upload Now".


4. When a message appears asking you to confirm the overwrite of the server's bookmarks, click "OK".

Restore a previous version at my.xmarks.com

For details on how to restore your bookmarks online, please consult Features: Backup and Restore.

WHY DOES THIS HAPPEN?

There are a number of things that can cause your bookmarks to disappear, but none of them are due to Xmarks itself. If Firefox doesn't shut down properly, your bookmarks file on disk can become corrupted, for instance. There may be a problem with your profile, the set of files in which Firefox stores all of the information specific to your installation, including your bookmarks. Xmarks can't prevent these problems from happening. But we are trying to limit the damage by detecting when this problem has occurred, and by providing this information to help you recover.

If you need further help, please give us more details about the issue you're having below.

Oh my, that's wonderful indeed! I do prefer the live search though because I may be hesitant to just drop my response after having carefully crafted it. In any case, we'll definitely reconsider adding this widget to our site instead of what we're currently using. Thanks! – Gaurav, on February 13, 2009 23:44

Oh cool. Unfortunately, the Feedback Tab widget doesn't search across existing posts like when the user enters feedback on GetSat itself, or from the older feedback widget (see http://foxmarks.com/help) which is why we've refrained from moving over to it so far. – Gaurav, on February 13, 2009 23:27

Any progress on this Lane? We would love a feature like this. Foxmarks supports a wide array of operating systems and browsers. It's important for us to ask users what OS, OS version, browser and browser version they are running in order to help them. Often, this results in a round-trip since there's nothing to prompt users to provide such details. – Gaurav, on February 13, 2009 22:53

Any updates on this guys? We're keenly awaiting private messaging to help us request personal information like usernames and logs. – Gaurav, on February 13, 2009 22:49