method to clean a spammed forum-thread

Recently, we got 600 spam forum posts because I goofed with permissions and allow guest to post. Permissions sound fixed now. But I still had the posted content.

I just found the following method to clean a spammed forum-thread… it's not great luxury but it has the advantage of not needed an xml archive down and upload (I didn't remember how to get the xml-archive then).

• first create a forum that is only admin visible, call it trash-forum
• then view your spammed-thread and use "move this resource"
• move it to trash-forum/xxx (xxx could also be the title of your thread)
• come back to the spammed thread forum, post a new thread with exactly the same title, the contents of the post will be dropped
• see the forum thread, then see the forum entry (you may need "list entries")
• delete the entry resource, the forum thread is now empty
• go to the polluted thread inside trash-forum
• see the "good entries"
• for each good entry, move them back to the forum thread you created
• having done that your forum thread should look good
• and the thread in forum-trash should be only made of undesirable things, you can delete it

At this point, the only thing I haven't found to solve is the timeline… it contains the old events, including the title of the dirty posts… If someone has a good idea...

thanks

paul

posted by Paul Libbrecht at Jan 13, 2009 10:04 AM