Poll: Should Private Messages be allowed here?

[FourthWorld]

I'm curious about how the members here feel about Private Messages.

Given the problems we'd had with spam in the past, I don't mind having them off. But I also see many posts in which people come up with all manner of odd ways of posting their email addresses here so others can contact them with having their address harvested by bots.

This poll was not requested by RunRev, and even if there's a clear preference expressed here there's no guarantee Private Messages will be reinstated.

Still, it seemed worthwhile asking for your thoughts on this.

Thanks.

[Dixie]

Well, Richard Gaskin...

I guess I know how you voted..

[FourthWorld]

I haven't voted yet.

[Dixie]

Oh.. LOL

[Simon]

Hi Richard,
I'm unsure of the implications of allowing pm's?
Would this lead to some question getting answered but not posted to the forum? I think that wouldn't be good.

Simon

[FourthWorld]

Simon, I think most people would continue to use public posts for public discussion.

Private Messages (PMs) are a feature of PHPBB and most other popular forum software. They can be turned off, as was done here, but most leave them on. In fact, this is only forum I've seen which has this disabled.

Cons: When PMs are enabled for a user it's possible for spam bots to use them to send unwanted messages. The feature was disabled here for that reason, though it may be helpful to note that in those days the public forums were continually overrun with spam, and since then the spam problem has been so greatly reduced that the likelihood of spam messages is much lower than it was.

Pros: There are many contexts in which a private message may be more desirable than a public one.

Here are some examples:

- As a means of conveying an email address without exposing it to the world:
http://forums.runrev.com/viewtopic.php? ... 122#p57119

- A request meant for one specific person:
http://forums.runrev.com/viewtopic.php? ... 584#p88584

- Providing personal information to fulfill a support request, in this case an IP address:
http://forums.runrev.com/viewtopic.php? ... 740#p85740

- Discussing project-specific details with a prospective contractor:
http://forums.runrev.com/viewtopic.php? ... 233#p63233

- Discussing matters which may be best served in private conversation:
http://forums.runrev.com/viewtopic.php? ... 968#p43968

- Establishing contact with a small number of others for activities outside the forum:
http://forums.runrev.com/viewtopic.php? ... 6800#p6800

When we consider the many times an email address is posted here because PMs aren't available, I'm not sure it's actually stopping spam as much as just moving it from PMs to the In Box of those who've had to do that.

We've managed to get by without PMs for so long that I wouldn't mind if the LiveCode forums remained among the very few that don't use this feature.

But I use it regularly on every other forum I frequent, so I've cast my vote for "Yes, but only with off being the default", so the members here can choose for themselves whether they want to use PMs.

[Simon]

Thanks Richard,
I get it now.

Simon

[robl]

I think having the PM system enabled would be useful, if not abused. It would be a way to filter some potential spam from hitting my email. However, I'd suggest a captcha to be used before sending PMs to filter out automated spam bots that may find some vulnerabilities in the phpBB forum software.

I choose not to post to the mailing lists for the fear of my email address being easily targeted for SPAM and find the forum a good alternative.

R/ Robert

[mwieder]

Private messaging is back.

Robert- the email lists are well-protected against spam. The mailarchive, gmane, and nabble list archives all obfuscate email addresses to that they can't be harvested by spambots. I had concerns about this initially as well, as I don't post to public forums where addresses are published in plain text or even not visible but in the DOM. Check out the list archives - there's a vibrant community over there, and for my part I find it easier to keep track of ongoing threads there than trying to navigate my way through web sites.