Indication of PM Received

[cityguy]

Apr 15, 2014 16:26:29 GMT -8 moonbeam said:

If I wanted to include multiple recipients, I wouldn't send a "private message." But, if that were for some reason necessary, I'd send them individual messages.

Okay, so what if you wanted to have a discussion with all of your staff members about a contest or something. It could be anything, really. The point is that you want to have input from all of your staff about this. Why would you send individual messages instead of one group message? If you send it to everyone all at once then everyone can see what everyone else is thinking, and you can have an actual discussion of the main board.

Food for thought only.


sent from my Galaxy S4

I believe it's still possible to email individuals, staff, groups, or any combination of members.

[Forever Sunshine]

I personally would rather know if someone's received and / or read my PM than to have the ability to PM more than one person, which we had the ability to do in the previous version, it just didn't all show up in the same "thread". If I choose to communicate with a string of posters on my board, I find it is just as easy to make a private thread on a private board where they all can join in!

Knowing if someone's read a PM not only lets the Admin know it's been received and read but also that the PM system is actually working. And I have seen numerous posters and admins requesting the feature be returned. 

[cityguy]

Apr 15, 2014 16:20:47 GMT -8 Michael said:

Just because you choose not to use the feature doesn't mean that others don't!

I never said or implied that others don't. My contention is that it seems more likely that PMs are exchanged between individuals, rather than between an individual and a group. And, of those occasions, it would be my guess that such PMs would usually only take place between the Admin and x-number of people.

Assuming that, there are other ways to accomplish contacting multiple members at the same time (email, for example) without sacrificing the ability to know that a PM had been received or opened.

[Craig]

There shouldnt be any issue with it being received. If it is in your messages then it has been sent/received.

Im kind of not liking the read notification myself. I find it personally a little intrusive, but that is just me, and I think others felt the same. It actually never worked correctly in v4 for quite some time, if memory serves me.

[mmhmm]

Apr 16, 2014 4:08:17 GMT -8 cityguy said:

Apr 15, 2014 16:20:47 GMT -8 Michael said:

Just because you choose not to use the feature doesn't mean that others don't!

I never said or implied that others don't. My contention is that it seems more likely that PMs are exchanged between individuals, rather than between an individual and a group. And, of those occasions, it would be my guess that such PMs would usually only take place between the Admin and x-number of people.

Assuming that, there are other ways to accomplish contacting multiple members at the same time (email, for example) without sacrificing the ability to know that a PM had been received or opened.

You're assuming incorrectly.  As I said, we use the multiple recipients option quite often on our board, and it isn't used only by the Admin.  Our posters also use it frequently.  Just as information could be emailed, you could email just one individual; however, if you did would you know the email had been read?  The receiver of a PM, or an email, has the freedom to choose to read it, or not to read it. If they choose not to read it, I don't see how they owe the sender that information. The choice lies with the receiver.

[moonbeam]

Apr 16, 2014 3:59:21 GMT -8 cityguy said:

Apr 15, 2014 16:26:29 GMT -8 moonbeam said:

Okay, so what if you wanted to have a discussion with all of your staff members about a contest or something. It could be anything, really. The point is that you want to have input from all of your staff about this. Why would you send individual messages instead of one group message? If you send it to everyone all at once then everyone can see what everyone else is thinking, and you can have an actual discussion of the main board.

Food for thought only.


sent from my Galaxy S4

I believe it's still possible to email individuals, staff, groups, or any combination of members.

Yes, of course it is. I don't know why you would do that over a multi-recipient PM, given it's basically the same thing, but that really isn't important. Nor am I trying to push you into anything. It was simply an example of a situation where I think using a multi-person PM makes a lot of sense. That's all.

[Lady Squid]

Apr 15, 2014 16:26:29 GMT -8 moonbeam said:

If I wanted to include multiple recipients, I wouldn't send a "private message." But, if that were for some reason necessary, I'd send them individual messages.

Okay, so what if you wanted to have a discussion with all of your staff members about a contest or something. It could be anything, really. The point is that you want to have input from all of your staff about this. Why would you send individual messages instead of one group message? If you send it to everyone all at once then everyone can see what everyone else is thinking, and you can have an actual discussion of the main board.

Food for thought only.


sent from my Galaxy S4

Our forum has a hidden, password-protected "staff room" where we discuss things daily. We don't do it via group PM's & don't see a reason to change that. We've been doing that since day one of our forum.

I think the ability to group PM is just fine, and there are uses for it. But I agree with those who feel PM's are mainly (at least in our case) sent between just two people, and if staff sends someone a PM, we need to know if they've read it. Period. We don't understand how this is a privacy issue, if staff can see the last time someone was on the forum, how is it an invasion of that member's privacy if staff knows they read a PM? I haven't been able to make that connection.

[mmhmm]

I'll tell you how I see it, Lady Squid: If I, as an Admin, send a PM to a poster about something that poster needs to know, my responsibility is fulfilled the moment I hit "send". It's the responsibility of the poster to keep up with their messages. If they don't choose to do that, it's their right not to. I'm not their mother. If I've sent a PM with important information and the recipient chooses not to read that PM, or doesn't stop by the board to see if there's anything they need to do as a member, that's on them, not me. I did my part. I don't have the right to control their part, and I don't have the right to intrude into what they choose to do. If they're not meeting their responsibilities according to the board's rules, that needs to be addressed and dealt with as the issue it is. If they want to ignore me, that's their right.

[Lady Squid]

Apr 16, 2014 6:23:01 GMT -8 mmhmm said:

I'll tell you how I see it, Lady Squid: If I, as an Admin, send a PM to a poster about something that poster needs to know, my responsibility is fulfilled the moment I hit "send". It's the responsibility of the poster to keep up with their messages. If they don't choose to do that, it's their right not to. I'm not their mother. If I've sent a PM with important information and the recipient chooses not to read that PM, or doesn't stop by the board to see if there's anything they need to do as a member, that's on them, not me. I did my part. I don't have the right to control their part, and I don't have the right to intrude into what they choose to do. If they're not meeting their responsibilities according to the board's rules, that needs to be addressed and dealt with as the issue it is. If they want to ignore me, that's their right.

Fair enough, but the system as set up now means that the staff member won't know if the member is ignoring them by not reading the PM, or ignoring them by not complying with with the PM is asking them to do or not do. That's two different issues in my mind, and there's no way for us to know.

I'm assuming in V4 your staff didn't actively use the feature which allowed staff to know when a PM was read, were you able to successfully deal with issues, not knowing this? (Sorry I can't remember if this was a feature which could be turned on or off. My question here might be meaningless.) ;D

Anyway, our staff feels we could deal with issues more effectively if we knew which of the above 2 scenarios we were dealing with. Again, we can tell whether they have stopped by the board or not, but cannot tell if they've read the PM's. I don't see the difference, privacy-wise.

As for other people mentioning emailing members about forum issues, THAT I feel is a complete invasion of privacy and I've never emailed a member about a PM or forum issue, and never would. I feel forum issues need to stay within the forum (much like Vegas...).

Getting down off the soapbox...

[mmhmm]

You'll know if the member is complying if the member does what needs to be done, Lady Squid. If the member doesn't do what needs to be done, that's an issue that will have to be dealt with. I do recall that V4 allowed us to see if a PM had been read, or not; however, that's not relevant now since V5 is today and V4 was yesterday. We dealt with issues as they arose, exactly as I said here. Don't comply? There will be consequences. It works just fine.

Whether you see the privacy issue, or not, enough people did see a privacy issue to bring about this change by ProBoards. That's one of the reasons why the system is as it is.

[Matt11239]

True. I agree with some of this. Other forums that are not proboards have an ability to where you can request a read receipt from a user.

[mmhmm]

Apr 16, 2014 6:54:02 GMT -8 Matt11239 said:

True. I agree with some of this. Other forums that are not proboards have an ability to where you can request a read receipt from a user.

If an Admin wished, measures to promote that could be included in the forum's Code of Conduct.  Members could be told they are expected to read and reply to PMs received from staff.  You can't force people to read the Code of Conduct, either; however, if they don't read it they're still responsible for their actions.

[cityguy]

I see nothing wrong with having the ability to send multiple members the same PM message. I've only addressed it because it was used as a justification for giving up the ability to see that a single PM had been received.

I don't understand the technical issues associated with this, but why does it have to be an either/or situation? Wouldn't it be of some benefit to know if nine of ten identical PMs sent to different members were never read?

[sambarnes]

Well, not really. That's were you just copy pasta the message and reply to them with it. If they refuse to acknowledge that they received the message then you take whatever action you feel is needed.

"If there's an outcry by an overwhelming majority of Proboard users requesting to have that ability, I've never come across it."

Likewise, there hasn't been an outcry of an overwhelming majority seeking the return of this feature either.

Also, this is considered a privacy issue. And this would require an overhaul of their current messaging system to allow for this since, regardless of your own use of it, there is a multiple recipient feature.

[Michael]

The discussion is moot. The feature is not going to be added back in anytime in the future. Sorry!