I added another tool this morning to my Moderator's Swiss Army Knife.

You know, the tool that lets me
* remove like/dislike privileges
* delete all likes/dislikes
* ban a user
* clear out a user's sig line, avatar, interests
* permaban a user
* rename them to something embarrassing

...all with one quick click!

Well, now there's another time-consuming operation I can perform with one click: delete all posts of a given user.

It even updates the "reply count" for each topic, so you don't end up with an empty page 2 or something (this has happened in the past when I went into the database and did a SQL statement to delete all of a user's posts). So that unpleasant side-effect -- the one downside of a QUICK solution -- has been removed. You can't really do it with SQL; you have to use PHP.

So the next time a stupid troll (who needs to get a life) posts 26 times from 3:00 AM to 10:00 AM (while most decent people are sleeping) I can simply wake up and click a button, and it's all gone! You wasted many minutes or even hours, and I wasted 2 seconds.

I like that ratio. I'd be happy to do that all day!

So bring it on, trolls. You're wasting your time. I have the tools now so you waste ALL of your time, and I waste none of mine.

EDIT: (To the troll:) Thank you for helping me beta test the new feature. I discovered that the "last post in each forum" was messed up if that topic got deleted by my script. I fixed it now, so CathInfo members won't be inconvenienced by that in the future.

I also fixed the "last poster in each topic" element, so if I delete someone's post, it will find the new "latest post" and use that.

Long story short, I'm getting this script to a state of perfection so the inconvenience(s) caused by trolls will be almost zero.

Thanks Matthew.

That troll ruined my Saturday Morning.

Quote from: Matthew (Dec 12, 2015, 12:52 pm)

I added another tool this morning to my Moderator's Swiss Army Knife.  [....] now there's another time-consuming operation I can perform with one click: delete all posts of a given user.  [....]  Long story short, I'm getting this script to a state of perfection so the inconvenience(s) caused by trolls will be almost zero.

I'd long wondered why the original developers of Mercuryboard(?)  hadn't already done that.  Or that you hadn't done so yourself, after experiencing an episode of the hostility that's sometimes encountered by traditional Catholics, and for which you and CathInfo are plausible targets.

Quote from: Matthew (Dec 12, 2015, 12:52 pm)

It even updates the "reply count" for each topic, so you don't end up with an empty page 2 or something (this has happened  in the past  when I went into the database and did a SQL statement to delete all of a user's posts). [....]  You can't really do it with SQL; you have to use PHP. [....]  I discovered that the "last post in each forum" was messed up if that topic got deleted by my script. I fixed it now[...].   I also fixed the "last poster in each topic" element, so if I delete someone's post, it will find the new "latest post" and use that.

I fully understand your enthusiasm, especially on the same day as you completed your programming exercise.  But when considered from a more dispassionate perspective, once you decided to proceed, those tasks all became simply aspects of the analogue to linked-list management that ought to be expected from a serious programmer or software engineer.  In the same sense that not fumbling sacred vessels is expected from a priest.

Quote from: Matthew (Dec 12, 2015, 12:52 pm)

[....] from 3:00 AM to 10:00 AM (while most decent people are sleeping) [....]

Only "most" of them.  There are, of course, decent programmers who're awake testing software, sometimes involving changes to Web sites.  Harrrummmph!

Yes, sometimes decent people need to work into the night, or work shifts. Still, RIP trolls and their posts is a good thing.