Recently we've (here on this very forum) experienced errors which we've identified as being related to moderation.  Specifically, the main forum page is not displayed, but rather the dreaded "reference not set to an instance of an object".  Well... we now know and can resolve that bug.

This error only occurs when a Moderator performs a Delete action on a post which is currently the most recent post in a thread.  What happens is that a dangling PostId is left on the Forums_Threads table which contains an invalid reference to the deleted PostId (in the LastPostedPostId field).

This bug can be fixed by modifying the procedure to fix this reference.  Further, there should be (but is apparently not) an FK relationship from this field to the Forums_Posts table.  The moderation action shoud have failed in the delete of the post... but this brings me to my larger concern.

IMO... Moderation should not physically "Delete" anything.  This loses audit trail and any ability to recover the content associated with an action which could be "challenged".  Forums are used for all kinds of things and I would think it appropriate that these records simply be marked as deleted (and excluded from selection) or even moved to an archive table (which could be done without changing other existing code).

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Scott Willhite, Co-Founder DNN

We have a more graceful way of handling this.  We actual do a cascading delete so the data is removed.  I did not implement the fix so I better double check on this though. 

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Chris Paterra

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