Mass deleting of spam discussions

misifi

Hi people, I created a forum that was going to be used to replace another existing forum on another platform, it was put on hold and I forgot about it for a while. I now need to implement and run it, however in the time that I had neglected it, several thousand spam discussions have appeared. I have now implemeted security measures to stop it happening again but my question is this: Is there a way for me to "tag" all of these spoof discussions and delete them at once or in tranches even, rather than one at a time?

Shadowdare

Since 2.1, there's a setting you can check on the advanced settings page to enable checkboxes to mass moderate discussions and comments.

Here is the 2.1 development branch: https://github.com/vanillaforums/Garden/tree/2.1

Here is a tutorial on upgrading: http://vanillaforums.org/discussion/24793/yet-another-vanilla-upgrade-and-duplication-tutorial

whu606

I'm guessing you didn't search for 'mass delete' on here.

Look at the BulkEdit or Cleanser addons to see if they will do what you want.

Otherwise, assuming you have no genuine discussions, you could use phpMyAdmin to delete all the records in gdn_discussion table.

hgtonight

You could also import the dummy content used for theming, which will replace all content with just a few discussions.

@Shadowdare, the admin check boxes are in 2.0.18.8 although there is no easy way to turn them on via the dashboard. Enabling the Split/Merge plugin will bring them out.

misifi

I did it in the end by deleting categories and replacing them with similar sounding named categories but with different permissions, as only the those that match will be transferred. I couldn't do a straight delete for some reason as the mysql seemed to have a problem if I didn't replace the deleted category with another.

JackJJW

Hi there, is there a very simple way of dealing this with problem. My forum is overrun with spam and deleting over 2,000 discussions individually just isn't going to happen.

Does Vanilla offer simple plugins that don't require any code editing etc?

Thanks

UnderDog

Restriction logger, bulk edit and some other plugins, yes.

Fill out peregrine's poll. Go to his user profile, all his addons are great and his poll will be in his discussions list

peregrine

@underdog,

the poll is here

http://vanillaforums.org/discussion/24785/poll-which-registration-method-and-plugins-do-you-use-to-deter-spammers-and-their-efficacy