A quick & dirty script to monitor the "ST LOUIS COPTALK" forum for deleted messages (http://members.boardhost.com/stlouiscoptalk/index.html). A list of message ids is saved to "process.argv[2].Date.now()", make this a cron job and then identify deleted messages through diffs.

scrape-message-ids.js

var fs    = require('fs');
var split = require('split');
var http  = require('http');

var pages           = new Array();
var messageIds      = new Array();
var pageScrapeCount = 0;
var msgIdFileName   = process.argv[2] + '.' + Date.now();
var msgIdFile       = fs.createWriteStream(msgIdFileName);

function getUnique(a) {
  return a.sort().filter(function(item, pos) {
    return !pos || item != a[pos - 1];
  })
}

function addPagesFromLine(offset, line) {
  var index = line.indexOf('<a href="index-', offset);
  if (index >= 0) {
    var pageNumber = line.substring((index + 15), (index + 16));
    pages.push('http://members.boardhost.com/stlouiscoptalk/index-' + pageNumber + '.html');
    addPagesFromLine(index + 1, line);
  }
}

function handleGetPages(cb) {
  pages.push('http://members.boardhost.com/stlouiscoptalk/index.html');

  http.get('http://members.boardhost.com/stlouiscoptalk/index.html', function(res) {
    var lines = res.pipe(split());

    lines.on('data', function (line) {
      addPagesFromLine(0, line);
    });

    lines.on('end', function (line) {
      pages = getUnique(pages);
      cb();
    });

  }).on('error', function(e) {
    process.stderr.write("Got error: " + e.message);
  });
}

function addMessageIdsFromLine(offset, line) {
  var startIndex = line.indexOf('a href="msg/', offset);
  if (startIndex >= 0) {
    var endIndex = line.indexOf('.html', startIndex);
    var msgId    = line.substring((startIndex + 12), endIndex);

    if (msgId.indexOf(' ') < 0)
      messageIds.push(msgId);
    addMessageIdsFromLine(startIndex + 1, line);
  }
}

function handleGetMessageIdsFromPage(page, cb) {
  process.stdout.write('getting message ids from page ' + page + '\n');

  http.get(page, function(res) {
    var lines = res.pipe(split());

    lines.on('data', function (line) {
      addMessageIdsFromLine(0, line);
    });

    lines.on('end', function (line) {
      messageIds = getUnique(messageIds);
      cb();
    });

  }).on('error', function(e) {
    process.stderr.write.log("Got error: " + e.message);
  });
}

function handlePageScraped() {
  if (++pageScrapeCount < pages.length)
    return;

  for(var id in messageIds)
    msgIdFile.write(messageIds[id] + '\n');
}

function handleScrapePages() {
  process.stdout.write('found ' + pages.length + ' pages containing message lists\n');
  for (var page in pages)
    handleGetMessageIdsFromPage(pages[page], handlePageScraped);
}

handleGetPages(handleScrapePages);