Same issue for me. You can see it at http://www.wp-amazon-plugin.com/forums/ in the German forums. My last reply was about 30 minutes ago, but on the main forums list it says more than 2 weeks ago. That does not really create a good impression for a new visitor.
As someone mentioned above, the repair function (Tools / Forums) makes it even worse and is not working.
I found a lot of other resources on the web about this issue. It still seems to be unfixed after all those years…
After about two hours I could find a solution for me. It turned out that current_user_can( 'bbp_forums_admin' ) resulted in false. This is why I could not access the menu or even write replies although the user admin showed me as WP administrator and forum keymaster.
I wanted to check why my user did not have the capability “bbp_forums_admin” and installed the plugin Capability Manager Enhanced. After activation of the plugin everything worked fine again. All menu items showed up and I could post replies. Maybe this plugin fixed what bbpress messed up after updating to 2.3.2…
I have the same problem with version 2.3.2. After updating the menu items for topics, forums etc. are missing. All new posts get blocked by the spam settings and I do not know how to activate them without the menu item.
I played around with Settings > Forums as jonboldendesign wrote. The items appeared. Then I put the settings back to default. Now the menu items are gone again and I do not have the permission to access the Settings > Forums page (as WP admin!) Great stuff… 🙁
