Thanks for the good reply. Yes, its likely that this is because of some cron not running properly. Good catch. After i wrote here, there was a blood red error message notifying me about this cron task also. Because we could not find any problems with cron we had to change to "run automatically with traffic" This fixed it. But the posts i marked for delete or move prior to my admin setting change remain stuck. I have no way to stop the status it is in currently, and i cannot delete them either.
How can I get the forums I deleted to wake up again, so I can delete or move them properly, now with the correct setting?