Instant Messages on the fourms?

[aeastet]

Have we ever talked about a way to send a question or just say hi to one individual?

[Darin.K]

Hi aeastet, how is it going today?

Spoiler

This has been discussed and I seem to recall the reception being tepid at best.  Out in the open is about the only way to go it seems.  The Community pages do have a mechanism for private messages which is not too bad if not abused.  I guess the point is usually to help the community moreso than one person, although sometimes wading through side conversations is a bit tedious.

[aeastet]

Yes that is what I though too. It would be nice to send a message to someone and ask how things are going when you have helped them with something. It would also be nice to send someone something (code) that you may not want everyone to have.

Just a thought.

[RayFarmer]

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@aeastet wrote:

.............. It would also be nice to send someone something (code) that you may not want everyone to have.

Just a thought.

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that could be called email...but what secrets have you got that you dont want to share

[altenbach]

There is certainly a need for out-of-band communications. IM is just one of them.

Most users here are protected by all the privacy mechanisms, so e-mail and other information is hidden. One possible tool would be anonymous e-mail where I could go to your profile page and send you an e-mail message without having to know your actual e-mail address. The forum would wrap the message in an e-mail to your registered address without revealing the address to the sender. It would add extra metadata for security (Explanation on why you got this e-mail and how to disable this feature, forum name and address, Sender profile name, originating IP address of the sender, etc.) so abuse can easily be tracked.

For new users, it should be limited to ~1/day (plus unlimited replies to an existing exchange with the same user) to prevent spammers signing up and flooding users via this. This limit can be relaxed for regulars.

The dangers are that potentially interesting technical discussions are kept private and the forum community does not benefit. Still, there is sometimes a need for short communications that don't belong into the forum, e.g.:

"Are you the guy I met at the last user group meeting? After I gave you a ride home, you forgot your jacket in the car. Unfortunately, I don't have your e-mail address or phone number."

"We are planning a surprise thread for Ben. Is there anything memorable you want to include?"

"I think the VI you just posted contains proprietary company information, have Laura delete it"

... see what I mean. 😉

[Laura F.]

We're certainly open to the idea of using a private messaging system in the forums, however the functionality we have access to isn't quite as configurable as Altenbach would like to see.  I can turn it on or off for certain groups, but there is no limit on the number that can be set as far as I can tell.

[Darin.K]

If at the very least we could block a specific user then it should work out.  Spammers should be reportable to a moderator and their message privileges revoked as appropriate.  Otherwise, just let me ignore any users who annoy me.

Spoiler

Oh wait, then it is effectively the same system as we have now... 

[aeastet]

I was thinking of sending something to someone to just ask how things are going. See if the code that I gave them did what they needed or if I need to explain how it works. I did not what to have to disturb everyone that had come and gone on the thread just to do that.

[Ben]

I am one of those that want to keep the conversations public. I do expose my e-mail since this is  how some of my customers contact me in the first place. I do occationally get e-mails asking for private help but they always (so far) comply with my requests and they trouble me no more.

I actually get more requests for help from the priave messaging on LAVA... go figure.

The e-mail system I have at work probably spares me a lot of spam, so I  can't speak to others e-mail systems of course.

I don't think I would want to have another messaging system to track so I would rather have the tag sorting issue (i.e. by count rather than alphabetic) fixed before efforts go into a messaging system.

Of course we could just by pass the formalities and start a "Contact Info" thread in the breakpoint were we just post our e-mail addresses so we can arrange those suprises* when appropriate.

Ben

* When Christian was about to pass 5K posts and was due for anointing by Jeff K some off-line communications resulted in Christian doing the deed but NOBODY noticed! We had Christian going for a bit until somebody not on the list finally noticed and posted. NI had to scramble becuase nobody could find Jeff K! I think they managed to pull Greg McKaskle out of the Ivory Tower to make the deed official.

BTW:

I have a folder where I keep all e-mails from people on the forum. If you would like me to include you in that list please e-mail me at

bar@DSAutomation.com

with a title indicating something to the effect Forum E-mails.

The mailing don't happen that often ( once every couple of years maybe) but if you want to be on the inside of the plans let me know.

[altenbach]

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Ben wrote:

Of course we could just by pass the formalities and start a "Contact Info" thread in the breakpoint were we just post our e-mail addresses so we can arrange those suprises* when appropriate.

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The forum is designed to provide privacy and a public thread with contact info does not belong in a public forum.Anyone who wants his information public, can already set their profile accordingly. Well, I would probably not participate in such a thread. (My profile has a link to my web page showing some creative ways to contact me.) 

I don't know how good the anti-harvesting measures of Lithium are, but it is generally a very bad idea to post any e-mail addresses in clear text.

I agree that any technical discussions should occur in the forum, but there is an occasional need for brief anonymous out-of-band communications between forum members. I think this feature should be available.

Lithium already supports this, so all Laura needs to do is flip a switch, it won't push other bug fixes back. 😉