XF 1.5 mass delete or prune messages

[kellym]

Is there a way to mass delete messages (and not just threads) written by users who have been banned?

I am converting to XenForo from vBulletin 5, which is the absolute worst commercial software I've ever used. I have thousands of messages that were actually SPAM and were "soft deleted" in vb5... but when converting from vb5 -> IPB -> XenForo, all those messages get transferred and don't get marked as "deleted". So if I don't get this fixed I'll reintroduce thousands of spam messages to the internet again. Sigh.

The fine folks at Todo10 have been doing the conversion for me but we ran into this snag. If we can mass prune messages from banned users and remove them permanently in XenForo, that would be a workaround. But I'm open to other suggestions too. The vb5 software doesn't have any mass prune capabilities or addons. Not sure about IPB.

 

[Chris D]

but when converting from vb5 -> IPB -> XenForo, all those messages get transferred and don't get marked as "deleted".

Why?

vBulletin has a system to mark posts as deleted. IPB has a system to mark posts as deleted. XF has a system to mark posts deleted. Posts in IPB which are deleted retain that state when we import them into XF so why can't that be maintained between vB and IPB?

 

[kellym]

Good question. I didn't realize all three systems support keeping deleted posts.

It sounds like the import scripts need to be tweaked to respect deleted posts. That might be on the IPB end, I don't know. I've asked the todo10 folks who are doing the conversion for me to take another look at the way they're doing the import to get this fixed. Thanks for the response Chris.

 

[kellym]

It looks like IPB's import script won't support the idea of respecting "soft deleted" messages when importing from vb5. So I'm totally stuck. I know it's not a XenForo problem at all, but ultimately I want to be able to use my XenForo license with the many posts and threads in my forum, converted originally from vb5.

If there is a tool or plugin that lets me bulk delete posts in XenForo based on the criteria, "If user is banned, delete posts and all started threads"? I would even pay someone to write such a plugin. To do this manually in vb5 will take me weeks since their bulk tools are simply brutal or non-existent. And I don't know the first thing about IPB. Grasping at alternatives.

 

[Mike]

There's the batch update threads tool in the control panel, but that represents options based on the thread more so than the user that posted it. It also wouldn't account for replies to threads.

Unfortunately, beyond that (or doing things manually with inline moderation), it would likely require an add-on.