Group Personal Messages

[bigballofyarn]

Forum URL: bigballofyarn.proboards.com

Is it just me, or is it hard to tell that a group PM went to a group and not just to yourself? A few of my members and I encountered a massive misunderstanding recently. We each thought we received an individual PM from the sender. The end result was obviously a group PM where people said things they didn't mean to say to the group, and some things came off wrong when nothing malicious was intended. Apologies were issued and we'll likely laugh it off. I suppose there's a feature request within my mistake. I feel like it needs to be more obvious that I'm responding to a group and not the sole sender. Yes, I did take better look at the PM after the fact and noticed the handful of names next to "Participants," but I felt like it was pretty inconspicuous. After speaking to a few people outside of this incident, they all replied to me, "Your forum can send a group message!?!?"

Has anyone else ever suffered the same misfortune? Do you agree or disagree with my opinion?

[yogibearbull]

I am wary of PMs.

I have had the experience where some participants thought they were responding to PM privately, but it included multiple participants, and response went to all participants (similar to the experience the OP describes). I think that the name PM (= PRIVATE Messaging) plays tricks. This is an issue with e-mails too where some e-mailers have default set as "Reply to All" vs "Reply to Sender"; of course, some deliberately use "Reply to All". I don't know if PM can have a similar refinement. So, the things I check with PMs and e-mails are who sent it, who are the participants, and whether I should reply to it or create a new PM or e-mail to reply.

PMs also vary by sites. At PB, the PM creator can change PM participants anytime but recipients can only leave the group PM (and cannot add participants, like the creator of the PM). At other sites, participants can also change participants and that totally changes the nature of the PM. In one Group PM at another site, I was irritated that I was added late to a Group PM and I could even delete the creator of PM from the conversation and I did just that - that fellow probably wondered why his PM chain froze.

[dustys]

Legit needs to be more obvious.

I see a personal message notification from sender A. I read the message thinking it went to me. I replied and only after the fact noticed it went to a whole group of people. You cant unsend these things and you cant recover from some mistakes. I made this error. So did others involved when this happened to me. It resulted in one girl being so embarrassed she deleted her account and we never saw her again. So yeah I agree.

[Scott]

bigballofyarn , in the meantime you can make a template change that would show multiple recipients on the PM list page:




In the Conversations Page layout template change this:
{if $[outbox]}
    <th class="recipients">Recipients</th>
{else}
    <th class="created-by">Created By</th>
{/if}
to this:
<th class="created-by">Created By</th>
<th class="recipients">Recipients</th>


Then go to the Conversation List layout template and change this:
{if $[outbox]}
    <td class="recipients clickable">
$[conversation.recipients]
    </td>
{else}
    <td class="created-by">
$[conversation.created_by]
    </td>
{/if}
to this:
<td class="created-by">
    $[conversation.created_by]
</td>
<td class="recipients clickable">
    $[conversation.recipients]
</td>

Of course this is a per theme modification and with v5 the modification will not show for those on mobile.

[Kami]

For some clarity (though I agree the name is not clear) PM actually means personal message, not private. It's also an artefact from bygone years — if you notice in the coding and link, to your inbox, they're actually called conversations.

[cshipman]

It still works as it does regardless of what people call it.

I only ever received one group PM and didn't realize it went to a group at the time. I embarrassed myself with my staff. I'm taking note of the coding above and will show my website manager. I agree that it's hard to tell you are replying to a group.

[Kami]

Nov 26, 2021 10:04:39 GMT -8 cshipman said:

It still works as it does regardless of what people call it.

I only ever received one group PM and didn't realize it went to a group at the time. I embarrassed myself with my staff. I'm taking note of the coding above and will show my website manager. I agree that it's hard to tell you are replying to a group.

As I prefaced my post, I agree that it's unclear. However someone referred to them as private messages and the implication of "private" being misleading. I just wanted to clarify that they aren't private.

[yogibearbull]

PM = Private/Personal Message/Messaging. Some commercial variations may be due to trademarks or copyrights.

Wiki has entry only under Private Message.

Facebook, Google and Twitter use Private Message/Messaging

ProBoards used Private Messaging in v4, then changed to Personal Messaging with v5.

I think that confusion that I referred to remains with either "Private" or "Personal" - that it isn't a Group message by default, and when it is made a Group message, possibilities of error, confusion and/or embarrassment may arise.

[Kami]

Again, I agree.

[bigballofyarn]

Scott,

I made the edits today and they look great. It's very immediately obvious now that a PM went to a group. I don't foresee having another PM disaster.

Thank you.

[Scott]

bigballofyarn - great, glad this solution works for you!