Undeleting a collection?

MusicBrainz
1

Stupid question for a stupid mistake: I have just very, very accidentally deleted a MB collection of thousands of releases, built up here over 20 years. (If you are discerning in your release analysis you know how much work that represents.)

Is that a hard delete? And if not, is there an undelete hidden somewhere?

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Is staff able to restore your collection?
When did you delete it, exactly, in UTC?

Do you remember its MBID, its URL?

Alternative restore method

You could see if there is an archived version, like for mine (I didn’t know there was).
If an archived version is good enough, we could try reloading it with HYPER MOULINETTE.

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Yeah I didn’t ask support yet, figured I’d put the question out there first for future boneheads like me.

All I have is its name, but I would imagine that’s enough for a back-end restore if such a thing is possible. That’s super-cool that they’re in wayback though.

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Maybe you have the URL in your browser history, or in a Edits for your subscriptions email?
Because otherwise, you cannot find it in the List of MB Collections in Web Archive, it doesn’t show Titles.

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Good tip, and timely as I keep only 24 hours. So now I have a url, but the wayback doesn’t :face_with_diagonal_mouth:

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There is a typical lesson here - never keep your master copy in the cloud. You should at least have a local backup periodically.

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I will try to remember doing this:

  1. Sort by artist – Cannot do better, yet
  2. Load all pages with mb_PRINT-ALL-PAGES
  3. Save as Webpage, single file .mhtml – Possible with Vivaldi, at least
  4. Also export to Markdown with MusicBrainz Collection Exporter
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All due respect, I know what I’m doing, and don’t need Use a Computer 101 lessons. It was a dumb mistake, and I can assure you it’s quite easy to make if you’re distracted. Two clicks and it’s gone.

I do wish it were easier to export than it is, but even if had been working from an export restoring it to where it was would have been quite a lot of work. That’s why I started with the question–still unanswered–whether it’s a hard or soft delete.

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Our most recent backup was on 2026-06-17. We don’t have an automated way to recover data from these, but I saved the file for now. What is the name of your collection? (Or if it was private can you message me through MB or Matrix?)

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So this implies it is in fact a hard delete?

Yes I’ll send it to you via mb

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Put this PowerShell script in your task scheduler: Get-MbCollection URL

PS> Unblock-File .\Get-MbCollection.ps1
PS> .\Get-MbCollection.ps1 https://musicbrainz.org/collection/0665e77a-62d7-4adb-b4eb-e9f98e96398e
Fetching collection 0665e77a-62d7-4adb-b4eb-e9f98e96398e ...
Collection: 'library'  type: release  items: 1450
Saved 1450 item(s) to 0665e77a-62d7-4adb-b4eb-e9f98e96398e.json

if had been working from an export restoring it to where it was would have been quite a lot of work

Obviously the reverse script can be easily done…

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It’s a hard delete, yes. We keep a limited number of private backups for disaster recovery which may contain your data.

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Thanks for the response. I would suggest some minor UI changes could make it harder to do something as dumb as what I did so easily in that case.

I can’t access the site at the moment–I get fairly regularly blacklisted by IP and have to ask to reopen–but will send you the details as soon as I have access. (Unless you are also on the support email, in which case I’ll just send it there.)

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I’m on support@ too, so go ahead. For the UI suggestion you can open a ticket on https://tickets.metabrainz.org whenever you have time.

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