Note: This topic was posted in the SMF support area, but got no responses, I am hoping for some comment here since I consider this a bug also.
*****
SMF 2.0 RC4
We just discovered that a member can set up a rule in their PM area which can auto-delete all PMs from Admins, Global Mods, or any other membergroup that exists. This seems strange. How can we make it so members cannot set up a rule that deletes Admin, or Global Mod, or System Warning messages from the moderation center?
Surely this is an oversight in SMF 2.0 RC4. No member should be able to set up a rule to auto-delete these staff messages. How can we disable groups from appearing in the member's PM rule configuration area, or keep them from setting up a rule for each Admin or Global Mod to delete their PMs? We would like them to be able to disable PMs from members who are harassing them, but not PMs from Admins!
Let me be very clear here - Setting up a rule to delete messages from Administrators also deletes all the warning messages sent to the user, this was verified by testing. No user should be able to auto-delete warning messages! This must be an oversight or bug.
Quote from: xrunner on December 11, 2010, 08:39:46 AM
Let me be very clear here - Setting up a rule to delete messages from Administrators also deletes all the warning messages sent to the user, this was verified by testing. No user should be able to auto-delete warning messages! This must be an oversight or bug.
so your saying you send a warning message, its filtered by the user and deleted and your copy is deleted as well?
Quote from: sawz on December 11, 2010, 09:11:26 AM
so your saying you send a warning message, its filtered by the user and deleted and your copy is deleted as well?
A member can set up a rule to auto-delete all messages from admin, including the anonymous warning messages sent when their warning level is adjusted. There are no copies that I know of for the warning messages; but that is beside the main point.
How is it not a bug to allow members to set up a PM rule that will delete admin and warning messages messages? There is no way I've found to disable this ability for regular members. This is a bug that defeats the warning messages from the warning system, and important messages from Globals and Admins.
in v bulletin you can choose not to receive messages or notification from the admins.
this isn't any different. if a user chooses to ignore warnings, ban them.
Quote from: sawz on December 11, 2010, 09:25:13 AM
in v bulletin you can choose not to receive messages or notification from the admins.
this isn't any different. if a user chooses to ignore warnings, ban them.
Thanks for addressing my question, but, very respectfully, what difference does it make whether it's the same as vbulletin or not? Just because it's the same as a competing forum doesn't mean logically it makes sense or is a good idea; and this doesn't make sense nor is it a good idea.
Letting members make PM rules to auto-delete admin and warning messages defeats the purpose of these message. It makes no sense whatsoever to me nor my other moderators. None of us understand why this is allowed with no way to turn it off. Admins must have unfettered ability to communicate with members whether they like it or not. How is this not so?
Can you explain why we can't at least remove certain groups from the rules making options?
I just did a test, I added my admin account to my test accounts ignore list, pm setting is set to accept from all but those on ignore list. I log into admin account that was put on ignore list and send pm to test account. check test accounts pm list and the message is there anyway.
tested with smf 2.0 RC4
Quote from: Illori on December 11, 2010, 03:51:59 PM
I just did a test, I added my admin account to my test accounts ignore list, pm setting is set to accept from all but those on ignore list. I log into admin account that was put on ignore list and send pm to test account. check test accounts pm list and the message is there anyway.
tested with smf 2.0 RC4
I did the same test and it didn't work that way.
Besides -
Quote from: sawz on December 11, 2010, 09:25:13 AM
in v bulletin you can choose not to receive messages or notification from the admins.
this isn't any different. if a user chooses to ignore warnings, ban them.
sawz just said it works like vbulletin, you can choose to not receive admin PMs. So he agrees with me it seems.
which receive personal messages from option did you test with? by default you cant ignore admin pm's from what i can see.
Quote from: Illori on December 11, 2010, 03:51:59 PM
I just did a test, I added my admin account to my test accounts ignore list,...
Oh wait - you are doing it wrong. I'm not talking about the ignore list, I'm talking about setting a Rule in the PM area where you can auto-delete messages from entire groups. It's a capability in your PMs. That's what you don't understand.
I just noticed that and can confirm what you said, I also dont like that all groups are shown even if they are marked private.
Quote from: Illori on December 11, 2010, 04:13:54 PM
I just noticed that and can confirm what you said, I also don't like that all groups are shown even if they are marked private.
Exactly! Thank you. I also see a huge flaw in the design of this "rule" option, as I've said no member should be able to set up a rule to auto-delete Admin's PMs. That's why the ignore list let's Admin's PMs through even though they are chosen to be ignored. Admins can't be ignored!
the rules are completely independent from the group status.. take a look at the popular email clients (thunderbird, outlook, popular webmail clients...). you can add a simple rule which deletes all mails from "postmaster".
Even if you would force me to GET these PMs, you can't force me to READ & UNDERSTAND these PMs..
Even if I can't delete these PMs via a rule directly I could still mark them with a label "don't read" or something similar and simply ignore them.
IMHO this is intended and is fine as it is.
Quote from: TE on December 12, 2010, 02:34:33 AM
the rules are completely independent from the group status.. take a look at the popular email clients (thunderbird, outlook, popular webmail clients...). you can add a simple rule which deletes all mails from "postmaster".
Here we go again...SMF doesn't have to behave like email clients. I just don't understand why these comparison to other software are being made. Why does SMF have to act like vbulletin or anything else? It needs to act the best way for the administrators of SMF forums.
Quote
Even if you would force me to GET these PMs, you can't force me to READ & UNDERSTAND these PMs..
Even if I can't delete these PMs via a rule directly I could still mark them with a label "don't read" or something similar and simply ignore them.
And that's my point - no Administrator PM should be stopped from getting to the inbox. After that we don't have control, but that's no excuse from allowing them to be stopped. You take it as far as it can go under some administrative control.
Please tell me - why would it be logical to be able to stop warning messages from appearing in a member's inbox? Just approach it logically.
Quote
IMHO this is intended and is fine as it is.
I have a completely different opinion, and so do my moderators.
Quote from: Illori on December 11, 2010, 04:13:54 PM
I also dont like that all groups are shown even if they are marked private.
I don't seem to replicate this - actually if the groups are marked as 'invisible' (or even 'visible - except in group key'), they are not shown in the list of the user to choose. Privately assigning groups does not imply the groups should be invisible, setting them as invisible does make them unavailable however.
I had not seen the option to make a group visible/invisible that fixed the issue.
xrunner,
I quote myself:
QuoteEven if you would force me to GET these PMs, you can't force me to READ & UNDERSTAND these PMs..
It doesn't matter if a PM is in my inbox or elsewhere.. I can still ignore the PM completely and simply click the "delete" button.
I personally miss these two PM options:
+ Receive personal messages from buddies only (buddies but not admins)
+ Receive personal messages from none.
Quote from: Illori on December 12, 2010, 11:30:49 AM
I had not seen the option to make a group visible/invisible that fixed the issue.
OK, maybe that's the way to go, What are all the ramifications of make a group invisible?
that does not fix the issue that this thread was about to start, it fixes the issue i found about listing all groups in the ignore group list.
Quote
It doesn't matter if a PM is in my inbox or elsewhere.. I can still ignore the PM completely and simply click the "delete" button.
Yes, but my point is this: You go as far as you can go. Up to a point, of course you can't prevent a person from reading or even understanding a PM.
Yet, this is no excuse (IMHO) to allow any regular member to make a rule to auto-delete PM from Admin or the warning system. Take an analogy - a summons. Does the legal system say to itself -
"Well, we can deliver the summons but that doesn't mean the recipient won't throw it in the trash or even understand it. I guess delivering summons doesn't make sense considering those things cold happen"
No. The summons is always delivered. The information is taken as far as it can go up to the point where the person receiving it is bound to take responsibility.
Same thing with PMs from Admins and warnings. Like a summons, you make them get delivered as far as you can. That's my beef here.
What do we want to do here?
I'm slightly in favour of always deliver warnings, but not admins PMs.
I'd like to give my input here. I've been running a forum for 7 years now.
Personally, I believe the end users of the forum should ALWAYS receive PMs from Admin and always receive warnings.
When the "Ignore groups" list is displayed, the Administrator group should always be hidden. You should never have to make the Administrator group "invisible" in the group settings, as this would prevent the Admin from having that as his primary member group. That is going in the wrong direction and causing other problems I don't even want to get into here.
Administrators are supposed to be a super user and able to do everything on a forum, even when restricted. I have even added the functionality on my forum software through modification to allow me to read all PM's sorted in a variety of ways, by a set of dates, by user (sent or received), etc. This allows me to monitor problem users more closely. I rarely use the feature, but if an administrator is going to allow "Reporting of PMs" then he should be able to read said PMs. He needs to be able to see the "conversation" that lead to the "report" in order to make a fair judgement.
Admins should not be able to be ignored. Also, in my opinion, the one thing an Admin should NOT be able to do is to ignore users. That is just plain careless. If a user is bothering an admin enough that the admin needs to put that user on an ignore list, then the admin should either "train them" or just ban them.
Admins should not be able to be ignored, nor should the be able to ignore. On another note, I don't think Global Moderators should be able to be ignored or to ignore either. Nor should rules be set up to auto delete messages from Admins or Global Mods and rules should not be set up for Admins or Global Mods to ignore others. If an Admin or Global Mod can't handle the users, they don't need to have the job. My 2 cents, which with inflation and taxes, comes to a total of $57.63.
Just for the sake of the discussion ;)
If I'm an admin and I'm "forced" to send a PM to a problematic user, the only things that I'm interested in is if he reads (and understands) the PM or not.
If he receives the PM but he deletes it immediately without even opening it or he just sets up a rule to automatically delete all my PMs to me it's exactly the same. Why? Because if I write a PM-as-admin (in the sense that I want to "suggest" a change in the way he is behaving) that means the PM consists of an expectation, a deadline and a consequence (e.g. "If you don't stop posting spam now, I'll ban you"). Then once the deadline is gone, he is gone too. :P
Okay, then just for the sake of discussion...
If I issue a warning to a user and the warning puts them on "moderation" where topics will not show until they are approved, this user that has the PMs being deleted will not know why they are being moderated.
I have used this tactic on several occasions, where the initial "friendly" PM went ignored, so I put them on moderation. Suddenly, they start reading the PMs to see what happened and things get straightened out. I've even gotten several useful and now valuable members of my site who started out that way.
The only option left to the admin if they person can't receive the written warnings is banning, which is extreme and not necessary if communication can be established. Generally speaking, moderation and temporary 2 day suspensions will in most (not all) cases get the attention of the offending user and correct the behavior. In 95% of cases, a first PM from a moderator or admin actually fixes it.
Most people who violate a rule don't even realize they are doing it, because every forum is different and has different things they allow.
Communication between the admin, moderators, and the users is a primary concern of mine.
If people have such differing strong views on this, the I would suggest setting it up as a member group permission. Something like, "Allowed to ignore/filter Admin PM" and "Allowed to ignore/filter Moderator PM". That would definitely do the trick, and allow everyone to have it their way. So many things work off of permissions, I don't understand why there wouldn't be a permission for something this important.
Hmmm... creating a mod comes to mind.
I will consent, that since this is "how it was intended" that it is not a bug. How about we turn this into either a feature request or mod request for the Permissions system? Can that be done? (Yes, I'm hopping on the bandwagon because I want the same as the opening poster.)
Interesting. Moving to Feature Requests.
Thank you for moving it. :)
Well, I'm not sure it is 'by design' that it behaves the way it does. It is by design that the admin PMs cannot be 'ignored', but auto deletion is actually an oversight rather than not.
I'm not actually sure it needs to be a permission. I'd personally think that auto-deletion of admin PMs shouldn't be possible, just as ignoring an admin's PMs isn't.
More feedback plz :P
hmmmm.... I tend to agree.
Quote from: Arantor Beeblebrox the First on November 25, 2013, 03:00:49 PM
I'm not actually sure it needs to be a permission. I'd personally think that auto-deletion of admin PMs shouldn't be possible, just as ignoring an admin's PMs isn't.
Hah - I posted this back in 2010, glad to see it's still simmering on the stove. :)
As you can imagine I've been going through this board, regardless of age, and picking up on what looks reasonable to me to implement ;D
Quote from: Arantor Beeblebrox the First on November 25, 2013, 03:00:49 PM
Well, I'm not sure it is 'by design' that it behaves the way it does. It is by design that the admin PMs cannot be 'ignored', but auto deletion is actually an oversight rather than not.
I'm not actually sure it needs to be a permission. I'd personally think that auto-deletion of admin PMs shouldn't be possible, just as ignoring an admin's PMs isn't.
More feedback plz :P
Agreed.