I have been looking into this too - as I batch-imported a load of topics, but the formatting was wrong - so I want to batch-delete them and try again.
I can soft-delete in bulk from the UI, but they are still in the database. Surely soft-deleted items get deleted eventually, otherwise the database will grow forever??
Unfortunately there isn’t currently any automatic cleanup of soft-deleted posts, and no manual bulk option in the UI either. The rails console is still the way to approach this if you need to do it.
There are a few topics with some info in about how others have approached it. I think this one may be a good example to get both topics and posts (though will need a tweak to tailor it for your own use case) How to delete thousands of Personal Messages? - #7 by RGJ. And remember to take a backup before trying anything destructive in the rails console as accidents can happen.
I think this is the relevant Feature request with the most recent activity if you’d like to add your vote and voice to it:
FYI - I find it amazing that a platform with so many great features doesn’t have any real data retention control. This could represent a regulatory compliance risk for some companies. At a bare minimum, you should at least be able to specify a retention period (in years) for soft-deleted items- as this would help with compliance and capacity management.