The new forum messenger system - quirks, features, problems, feedback

[nospam99]

I'm having a little 'trouble' sending PMs which makes me wonder if I can RECEIVE PMs. In order to avoid the potential of a flood to my Inbox, would 'someone' please reply here that they're sending me a PM and then send one. The point of the 'reply then send' is that other people can see that at least one attempt to send me a PM has already been done, thus avoiding the flood.

Related: with the new system, I have no idea what the remaining capacity of my message storage is.

[Happy Lemming]

2 minutes ago, nospam99 said:

 In order to avoid the potential of a flood to my Inbox, would 'someone' please reply here that they're sending me a PM and then send one.

Just sent you a test PM.  Hopefully you get it.

[nospam99]

Got it. Tks HL! I conclude that the problem I'm having SENDING PMs is not affecting my ability to receive!

[2BGoodAgain]

send a PM back to Happy lemming...

if he gets it, it may or maynot be a prob.

[William]

3 hours ago, nospam99 said:

Related: with the new system, I have no idea what the remaining capacity of my message storage is.

This may be related to javascript.... go here...https://www.loveshack.org/messenger/

Look at top right of page where there's a graphic, kind of like a horizontal thermometer or progress line. It should say what percentage of your box is in use. Then hover over it with your cursor and it should say what number of messages are in there and what the box capacity is. Be aware that if you disable your messenger (see below message list on page left for link), the whole message icon goes away and one must re-enable it in their profile area to see anything. Apparently one can't disable it from use and still see everything and/or read messages that are stored.

 

[nospam99]

@william. Thanks. Hover help doesn't report the count. Oh well .... yet another function that didn't require .js on the old system and does on the new.

[d0nnivain]

FWIW 

I couldn't figure out why I couldn't send them either.  I got a message that said my in box was full & I had to delete to send.  I always cleaned out my box so I didn't understand.  When I got in there, it said 146% of capacity. I realized every PM I ever got since joining LS had been restored during the relaunch.  No wonder the box was full.  lol 

[William]

Thanks for confirming that the problem is related to using a non-javascript browser. No doubt helpful to others in a similar situation. One workaround is one of the members here in the thread who is a regular member posting their total box capacity and you doing the math on the fly from the progress bar. For example, I know my box has 5000 message capacity and it's currently at 2%, so around 100 messages.

[Paul]

You can also see the number of private messages you have by clicking on Inbox. A drop down box will appear and show a list of your folders. There will be a count of messages next to each folder that shows you how many messages are inside.

[SincereOnlineGuy]

It is illogical that people who have been here for a decade cannot send a message to a person who has 9 posts.

SPAM has zero to do with the very realistic chance that someone who has been here a decade may have a suggestion or a related personal experience which he/she doesn't want to spell-out in grand detail for the entire forum, yet which may help the legitimate human who came here with a unique life experience that needs attention NOW... and not whenever someone arbitrarily decides that said person has been here long enough to warrant attention.    I mean, what if someone were dealing with suicide or something tangent to it?

 

When new people are  "seeking out feedback and insights from the community as a whole", they should still be able to receive private messages from 20 or 200 people.

That they cannot receive private messages from the get-go is illogical and stupid.

We who have been here for 10 years, promise in turn not to suddenly start sending spam to brand new accounts.

 

 

[SummerDreams]

4 hours ago, SincereOnlineGuy said:

It is illogical that people who have been here for a decade cannot send a message to a person who has 9 posts.

SPAM has zero to do with the very realistic chance that someone who has been here a decade may have a suggestion or a related personal experience which he/she doesn't want to spell-out in grand detail for the entire forum, yet which may help the legitimate human who came here with a unique life experience that needs attention NOW... and not whenever someone arbitrarily decides that said person has been here long enough to warrant attention.    I mean, what if someone were dealing with suicide or something tangent to it?

 

When new people are  "seeking out feedback and insights from the community as a whole", they should still be able to receive private messages from 20 or 200 people.

That they cannot receive private messages from the get-go is illogical and stupid.

We who have been here for 10 years, promise in turn not to suddenly start sending spam to brand new accounts.

 

Hmm this debate is interesting. While I agree with the moderators who don't allow new posters to send PMs, I see where you are coming from as well. But if what you are saying happens (the idea that a new poster can only receive PMs), they will probably make a thread saying "I have a problem with this matter, please the people who have the same problem PM me" (or even worse "the following posters: X, Y and Z PM me").

To be honest I do understand that someone who wants to share a private story that is similar to the OP's might not want to post it publicly, but from the other hand if this story is so very provate, why do they want to share it via PM with another stranger? Maybe this new OP shares it with other posters when they have the possibility to send PMs. What I want to say is, if a story is very private, it would only make sense that it was shared with nobody, in my opinion. It is a forum after all and we know that people are reading now and will be reading for as long as the forum exists, but on the other hand we are only a nickname so does it matter that much?

 

 

 

 

 

[Tristian]

6 hours ago, SincereOnlineGuy said:

SPAM has zero to do with the very realistic chance that someone who has been here a decade may have a suggestion or a related personal experience which he/she doesn't want to spell-out in grand detail for the entire forum, yet which may help the legitimate human who came here with a unique life experience that needs attention NOW... and not whenever someone arbitrarily decides that said person has been here long enough to warrant attention.    I mean, what if someone were dealing with suicide or something tangent to it?

As much as we try to help, Loveshack is just an online forum and remains pretty far from being on par with a suicide prevention hotline or other such resource.

There are many reasons members are vetted before being given access to PMs. Trolling and those that would use PMs to harass other members are a good example. I have seen and banned members for instances of both.

If a member truly feels the need to have access to PM early we have the Premium subscriptions available for those that do not want to wait.

[Paul]

Hi SincereOnlineGuy,

Thanks for sharing your thoughts and questions! In addition to what Tristian and William have already shared, I'll add the following:

9 hours ago, SincereOnlineGuy said:

It is illogical that people who have been here for a decade cannot send a message to a person who has 9 posts.

When we first brought private messages to the community, we allowed everyone with an account to use them. However, we quickly learned that new members often did not understand the purpose and design of the community--that LoveShack.org is a place to get multiple viewpoints from multiple people, and that anyone that shares here is expected to do so inclusive of the entire community. And, the same was true from our beginnings in a real-time chat environment. It is a disservice to the person seeking feedback to message a select individual, and a disservice to the community as a whole for a person to privately message feedback in return. This community's strength is in facilitating the very public airing of private affairs as a way to safely get feedback and insights from people of all walks of life, and with all sorts of life experiences.

We highlight the value of collaborative exchange in our Community Guidelines:

Community participation and inclusion

We remind all participants of the value of collaborative exchange. Discussions occurring on the public forum are to be inclusive of all participants and should not be of a private nature between a small, select group of people.

From: https://www.loveshack.org/community-guidelines/#inclusion

From a safety perspective, LoveShack.org is not a substitute for professional counseling or medical advice. We remind participants and visitors of this at the bottom of every page on the site. If someone were to provide biased, unsafe, unwise, or reckless feedback in a private message, the person receiving the feedback is not given an opportunity for the entire community to add their voices to the conversation.

9 hours ago, SincereOnlineGuy said:

SPAM has zero to do with the very realistic chance that someone who has been here a decade may have a suggestion or a related personal experience which he/she doesn't want to spell-out in grand detail for the entire forum, yet which may help the legitimate human who came here with a unique life experience that needs attention NOW... and not whenever someone arbitrarily decides that said person has been here long enough to warrant attention.

For your own personal safety, we strongly discourage sharing any details in any format (public or private) that may disclose things about you that would compromise your personal identity directly, or when used in combination with other details you've shared here or elsewhere in your life. The culture we cultivate here is such that having anonymous exchanges in public benefit not only the person starting a discussion or soliciting feedback--they also benefit the people responding, and the many more people silently reading and learning from the exchange.

9 hours ago, SincereOnlineGuy said:

I mean, what if someone were dealing with suicide or something tangent to it?

On the public forums, please direct an individual to contact the National Suicide Hotline, at 1-800-273-8255 and report the post by clicking "Report Post" in the upper right to alert moderators. For individuals outside of the United States, see: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_suicide_crisis_lines

9 hours ago, SincereOnlineGuy said:

When new people are  "seeking out feedback and insights from the community as a whole", they should still be able to receive private messages from 20 or 200 people.

That they cannot receive private messages from the get-go is illogical and stupid.

We who have been here for 10 years, promise in turn not to suddenly start sending spam to brand new accounts.

I understand and appreciate your perspective, and took this approach into consideration. In the end, however, we thought it would be confusing, both technologically and culturally, to be able to receive messages, yet not send any.

We think our current policy best facilitates individuals to seek out many other perspectives other than their own, instead of the people whom they most resonate with.

Best,
Paul

[nospam99]

As near as I can tell, the counts associated with the mail folders are counts of message THREADS, NOT INDIVIDUAL MESSAGES. Nothing wrong with that ... just trying to clarify exactly how to interpret information being presented in the User Interface. And, BTW, just based on the counts many (less than half of the) messages I had in my Inbox and Send folders on the old system never got transferred.

[William]

Yes, I believe you are correct, the number the system is reporting relates to conversations, in which there can be a number of messages contained.

Also, there was apparently a bug during the forum port that didn't transfer conversations where the member had deleted the message that started the conversation on the old forum. There's details on that somewhere. My supposition is that conversations were treated as you described them, 'threads' and when the first post of a thread is deleted, the whole thread is taken with it. No doubt Paul can explain further but that makes sense to me.

Edited January 13, 2020 by William

[nospam99]

With regard to 'undisappeared' PM threads, I just noticed that for the few threads that 'survived' the transfer, there is some kind of status associated with the other party to the 'conversation'. In my Inbox, that status is often 'Left the conversation'. I assume that means that there is no copy of the conversation in the other person's Inbox. Am I correct?

[nospam99]

FWIW, I've been using different messing systems at least since '92 (on mainframes - could be as early as '89 - I'd have to dig out my 1.44 meg 3.5'' in stiffies to check). I've always been in the habit of quoting at least part of any message I was replying to. On the old LS system, there was a storage limit of 70 messages (NOT threads) and the system did not visibly keep track of threads. Instead I had to compare messages in the Inbox and Sent folders to try to manually identify threads. And then, in order to free message slots so I could receive a message if someone sent me one, I'd carefully delete early messages in those threads in cases where quotes of those early messages were preserved in later messages. Apparently, with the way the transfer worked, I ended up 'shooting myself in the foot'. Curses, foiled again!

[MeadowFlower]

Hey guys, does anyone know why my past messages aren't showing in my inbox? And is there a way I can retrieve them? 

[Paul]

Hi Meadowflower,

30 minutes ago, MeadowFlower said:

Hey guys, does anyone know why my past messages aren't showing in my inbox? And is there a way I can retrieve them? 

Messages sent prior to the most recent site upgrade in some cases did not convert over due to a design flaw in the conversion process. We reported the issue upstream to our software provider, however the fix they provided required that we wipe all content posted after the conversion and essentially start over. This was clearly not an acceptable option, and our testing prior to transition never alerted us to this issue.

I apologize that some messages are no longer there. We'd love to eventually migrate that data over from our snapshot of the site just before the migration, however we were not able to get a supported solution from our provider and coming up with a custom solution will not be a quick endeavor.

Best,
Paul

[nospam99]

You need any help reverse engineering the source and target databases?

[RecentChange]

How long does a new member have to be here / how many posts before they can receive a PM? I just tried to message someone who is newer - and got blocked. I am guessing they do not have PM privileges yet

[RecentChange]

Ok..... Guess it's a tactic to encourage people to buy memberships. I'll just wait. 

[SummerDreams]

Yep. Forums are supposed to have the logic of scripta manent. A story of today can possibly help someone else (or more people) in the future. If this happens in private, then the forum will become just the means to talk to people in private which will make it lose its purpose.

[Paul]

Hi RecentChange,

2 hours ago, RecentChange said:

Ok..... Guess it's a tactic to encourage people to buy memberships. I'll just wait. 

Not at all. We restrict private messages to new members for two primary reasons:

1. We want it to be clear to members that LoveShack.org is a place for public discussion amongst its community members. We found that often new members would attempt to reach out privately to people to avoid posting about personal matters in an open forum. For more, read the Primary Directive portion of our Community Guidelines.
2. We do not want members to be inundated with spam from individuals creating new accounts to send spam via private messaging.

Disabling private messages for new accounts was a consequence of issues that we encountered when we first introduced the feature. Both of the above happened to a degree where we made a decision to make this a feature for our more established members who had had ample time to acclimate to the community and its expectations.

We believe that there is no legitimate reason to open up private messaging to newer members, however as a courtesy to individuals who have decided to support the community through a premium membership when they're still relatively new, we remove the restriction and give them the benefit of the doubt that they will follow our Community Guidelines or run the risk of having access to their account restricted as a consequence of choosing not to do so.

There is no mechanism (premium subscription or otherwise) that would allow a member to send a message to someone who has elected to disable their private messages or who has not met the qualifications necessary to gain access. In fact, moderators cannot even bypass these restrictions.

Best,
Paul

[RecentChange]

I meant the ambiguity as to how long a new member must be on this site, and how many posts they must have before they can PM.