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#1 2007-08-31 17:14:46

STiAT
Member
From: Vienna, Austria
Registered: 2004-12-23
Posts: 606

[punbb] Private Messages

Hey guys,

A feature in PunBB i'm finally missing a lot, due to the reason that i can easily try to contact anybody without spamming mails, are private messages. Often, i want further information about something, or simply want to try to contact somebody.

I love private messages, for side-notes to users or offtopic replies, as i often did with skoal in former times... sometimes it was like instant-pming.

I know that there at least is one plugin for punBB which implements private messages. Is there any reason why such a plugin is not available for our forum? It's basically the only thing that i'd like to see around smile.

Do we have any particular reason for not having PMs in our forums?

PunBB PM Plugin

Yours,
Georg

Last edited by STiAT (2007-08-31 17:15:11)


Ability is nothing without opportunity.

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#2 2007-08-31 17:27:00

Dusty
Schwag Merchant
From: Medicine Hat, Alberta, Canada
Registered: 2004-01-18
Posts: 5,986
Website

Re: [punbb] Private Messages

Mostly we minimize the mods for KISS on our end -- when we need to upgrade punbb we don't want to install a bunch of mods as well.

I personally don't see much conceptual difference between a PM and an e-mail. In the end, a PM is just a folder of messages somewhere, just like a folder in your e-mail client.  I don't think many PMs are sent, and if somebody does find its a problem at their end, they can set up a filter to put them in a separate folder. Indeed, phpbb used to send you an e-mail informing you that you had a private message every time you got one anyway, which I found to be a real pain because I had to log into the forum to read the damn things. ;-)

As for skoal, I've e-mailed him a time or two; I can assure you that he doesn't mind. Although, he did send me an e-mail that got gobbled up by an unnamed authoritarian government once...

Dusty

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#3 2007-09-01 15:57:00

skoal
Member
From: Frequent Flyer Underworld
Registered: 2004-03-23
Posts: 612
Website

Re: [punbb] Private Messages

Dusty wrote:

As for skoal, I've e-mailed him a time or two; I can assure you that he doesn't mind. Although, he did send me an e-mail that got gobbled up by an unnamed authoritarian government once...

Mind?

Yeah, when I was in China, that email I sent you landed me in Drapchi, which is like Guantanamo but with wild wolves and cannibalism.  Most of my days, I spent pounding limestone rocks into exportable GNC vitamins, shaking my one good unmangled fist at you in the air!

Email is fine, but as a moderator on the ubudoobie distro, the forum pms were really the only effective place to crack a whip on a user when necessary.  Other than that, I agree with my northern Canadian bacon friend.

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#4 2007-09-05 14:37:20

STiAT
Member
From: Vienna, Austria
Registered: 2004-12-23
Posts: 606

Re: [punbb] Private Messages

I must say i'm not capable reading all the mails i get in a day (900+), for the reason that i always have too many projects to work on. I usually invest a whole day on weekends to read and answer them.

But for PMs, i always found time, especially in arch. I can't force users to have a [ARCH-PM] in front of their e-mail, but on the notification from the arch boards i can.
Also, i might miss more things which would have been related to my packages, project or anything else. And i bet nobody else would have been interested in the discussions of skoal and me, about shavers and dressed peanuts.


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#5 2008-04-18 08:23:06

chaosgeisterchen
Member
From: Kefermarkt, Upper Austria
Registered: 2006-11-20
Posts: 550

Re: [punbb] Private Messages

Good morning, fellow archers!

I have the urge to revive this thread (as it is the only one I found on this topic, search term 'private messages'). Since my  latest thread apparently got closed, I have no real option to contact the persons who were participating thereafter, like ensuring lucke that his posting did not get overlooked in any way and show my gratitude for the quick and elaborate help being offered by the devs.

A nice and short private message would be the ideal way to deal with this. I know, that Arch wants to stick to the KISS principles, but I feel some kind of lost, if I am not able to communicate with other users, as contacting them via email is not always the ideal way to deal with it. Mails do not only get overlooked quickly in todays times of spam-flooding, it's also not something I would like to discuss via email, as this issues are mostly limited to topics circling around Archlinux.

So I would like - once again - ask, in how far it would affect the performance of the forums to enable PMing, like we had beforehand.

Thanks for any explanatory reply in advance,
cg


celestary
Intel Core2Duo E6300 @ 1.86 GHz
kernel26
KDEmod current repository

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#6 2008-04-18 08:42:21

neotuli
Lazy Developer
From: London, UK
Registered: 2004-07-06
Posts: 1,204
Website

Re: [punbb] Private Messages

Alrighty let's see if I can explain this the way I want to while I'm half asleep.
Performance-wise, PMs wouldn't affect the forums at all. It's just some more data in an sql database, nothing too special. The worse effect (and the reason we haven't added PMs) is that the forum software we use, punBB, doesn't actually have any builtin PM functionality. This means we'd have to apply some mods (so... patch it) in order to get this functionality. The more mods we use, the more maintenance and upgrades become a nightmare situation, and so we're running a very very lightly modded punbb installation right now, and it's working great (upgrades take cactus and I anywhere between 5 to 20 minutes, it's awesome).

Anyhow, that's the reasoning for it. Additionally, since the switch to punBB, I haven't heard very many complaints about the lack of PMs, and frequently get emails related to forum topics, so I'm not too convinced it's worth the maintenance cost.

I hope that explains it.


The suggestion box only accepts patches.

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#7 2008-04-18 09:30:48

chaosgeisterchen
Member
From: Kefermarkt, Upper Austria
Registered: 2006-11-20
Posts: 550

Re: [punbb] Private Messages

neotuli wrote:

I hope that explains it.

It does, thanks a lot.

neotuli wrote:

The more mods we use, the more maintenance and upgrades become a nightmare situation, and so we're running a very very lightly modded punbb installation right now, and it's working great (upgrades take cactus and I anywhere between 5 to 20 minutes, it's awesome).

I haven't thought about it this way, but considering the effort needed to maintain this plugin it's not worth it, as long as the userbase can live with e-mail contact only. I will see soon enough whether I am running into difficulties or not, but my latest experience seconds your opinion, that it's working fine the way it is.

So no more complaints from my side.

Regards,
cg


celestary
Intel Core2Duo E6300 @ 1.86 GHz
kernel26
KDEmod current repository

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#8 2008-04-18 10:26:28

iphitus
Forum Fellow
From: Melbourne, Australia
Registered: 2004-10-09
Posts: 4,927

Re: [punbb] Private Messages

What's wrong with sending them an email?

Most people check their email daily/frequently.... so they'll get it.

Email's a heap more convenient too, just hit reply in your favourite client and get it dealt with there.

I think it's a way better solution.

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#9 2008-04-18 12:59:44

Misfit138
Misfit Emeritus
From: USA
Registered: 2006-11-27
Posts: 4,189

Re: [punbb] Private Messages

IRC may be worth a shot too. wink

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