Mass Deletion of OMNI Posts: Is there an easier way?
 

With changes to OMNI's viewing audience, I've been compelled to delete or edit posts. This is proving to be time consuming, is there a short-cut that would allow me to delete ALL OMNI posts and start fresh?

Here is my current technique:

Use "advanced search" to find posts by "me" in "OMNI"

Open each thread, find my posts

Click to "edit" then click "delete"

Click "delete this message"

Click "back" to search results

Repeat

Is there an easier way?

To follow up on this, will FlyerTalk prune a users posts on request?

Can prune be used against a single fora, or is it only by ID, sitewide?

I'm not aware of any way other than what the OP outlined above.

It's a tedious process.

We're trying to populate the new OMNI/PR with all the historical PR threads in regular OMNI and, not being a Google searchbot, it's taken a gazilion hours just to do 1% of the historical threads.

The stuff we're trying to do requires actually reading a bit of the thread for context.

Are we still on vBulletin? Your job is tedious because PR threads can only be identified by hand, absent AI tools.

Removing groups of threads by poster should be trivial for the admins. The only question is how fine grained that tool allows them to be.

I seem to recall one poster who asked to be expunged from the database, though I cannot seem to find that thread at the moment.

Not really. But you can set the advanced search to Show Results as "Posts" rather than threads. You can then click through directly to your post rather than searching the thread for your posts.

What's amazing is that you're still sane :cool:

That's your opinion.

Ask Mrs. Cholula what she thinks........:D

Yes, the VBulletin admin tools allow for this type of request

Whether or not the admins of this site will do it is another issue, however.

http://img406.imageshack.us/img406/9922/prunehu2.th.jpghttp://img406.imageshack.us/images/thpix.gif

Perhaps one of our many resident copyright lawyers will weigh in on this question of the moment. I know FlyerTalk is granted rights to the content we post, but I'm not sure that includes allowing it to be indiscriminately reproduced throughout cyberspace.

My suggestion is that FlyerTalk set up a page. On that page is a list of all the forums, with checkboxes. You click on the forum from which you want your posts removed, click OK, and it is done.

That was my thought was well, especially at the time I registered for FlyerTalk.

I'd imagine if that were the case, Google would have been sued long ago and lost, but I defer to those in the legal profession. :)

Google claims it acts in the same manner as a news server. However . . .

I once accidentally made a public posting on a newsgroup that was intended to be a private email. Google gave me around about removing it from google mail. I sent a letter on letterhead to their legal apartment asserting copyright infringement and ending with three words: "Just try me."

The post was removed the same day the letter was received.

As far as copyright law and reproduced posts, I've explained this recently and in detail on another thread -- it's too late to look for it now, but do a search on my name and you'll find it.

deleted, decided to start a new thread with it

Very good. Thank you.

I would still like to hear from our administrators clear direction on what they will or will not do with respect to purging posts.

In reference to the OP, I am finding that even the laborious way described is not an effective way, inasmuch as there is residual text available for OMNI search.

The better way to delete an OMNI post is twofold:

1. Locate post and click edit. Block all text and delete. Type some sort of replacement text, such as "deleted" (or whatever). Save the changes. Wait a few second. Then

2. Click edit again. This time choose the delete option and proceed as discussed in OP.

This is better because it avoids the residual quoted line left and available for search.

If a person uses deletion method # 1 only, then entries are theoretically available for Google search, though text is not. I.e., your comments themselves will not be available for Google search, but the fact that you posted in a certain thread could be.

OTOH, if a person uses deletion method # 2 only, that process will remove the post from a Google search, but it will still be available through a local OMNI site search. Local search requires signing on. The search results will continue to give the first line of the post, just as before your deletion, but now will no longer give the full post.

The reason I do not recommend the method in OP: Should you use that method alone, i.e., method two, initially, then the post will continue to display in an OMNI search, still with the first line of your text, plus now a garbage can to the right, and there is no way to access the post (which is gone now) in order to delete the quoted first line.

So it is essential to delete all text and save the deletion before actually deleting the post itself.

That is a lesson I learned the hard way, to use a two-step process.

Even then, of course, there will be threads from others who quote your text, and these are also searchable. And there are presumably archives. But this is the best that can be done by the individual poster, SFAIK.

There is always the hope that one day the program bug referred to in the answer to my query on another thread in this forum will be corrected, so that only a one-step deletion procedure would be sufficient for whatever erasing is possible,

http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/showthread.php?t=880125

but the computer bug has evidently been around for at least months now, per that explanation by the link referred to by poster in the other thread.

Trying to help.