10 messages per hour

[clapter]

Im finding this very annoying when I am trying to have a private conversation

[LiroyvH]

...?

[metallica48423]

@CoreISP: PM's have a limit of 10 per hour.

[LiroyvH]

Oooooh, was already wondering.
Well good, better a limit of 10 then getting flooded with spam, hehe.


- Liroy

[clapter]

Getting flodded with spam?
At least make it 20-30 PM's an hour for us people who NEED to talk to other people

[PacificWx]

perhaps use msn, gmail chat etc...

[clapter]

What if the two in conversation to not wish to give out such information?

[PacificWx]

Well that would be something the 2 would have to try and work out.  I doubt that this forum would increase that amount, for the reasons stated earlier.

[clapter]

Yes just thought my opinion *might* make a difference

[metallica48423]

I'd like to see where the discussion here goes.  Once that's done we can take it to the team and see what happens.

Thing is, it's an antispam measure.  And this site tends to get enough attention from spambots and spammers as it is, being a PR8 site.

It also does help when presenting your opinion, to make sure you're not coming across as rude or angry.  People in general tend to not listen when they feel like one is being rude about their opinion.

[clapter]

I did not mean to come across angry.

[PacificWx]

One possible option is post count group based limits - increasing with the contributions made (I am sure that has already been thought of).

[clapter]

You stolr me idea I was about to post that, but I think it is a good idea, but i ould also be a bad idea. Some active members may only have 15-30 or so posts, but each one is long and very thought out,  but some spammer might come in and get 5000 oposts in 2 days and he could spam the enitre board. there are pros and cons.

[PacificWx]

that is a very pertinent point and is probably at th heart of why it has not been instituted.

[H]

What if the two in conversation to not wish to give out such information?

Get another e-mail / IM address then?

[MrPhil]

Some active members may only have 15-30 or so posts, but each one is long and very thought out,  but some spammer might come in and get 5000 oposts in 2 days and he could spam the enitre board. there are pros and cons.

Well, spammers will always find a way to game the system, no matter how complex you make the metrics (PMs per hour allowed based on ..... criteria). Excessive posting could be screened out (someone who posts 5000 times in two days has to be a spammer and should be banned anyway), but even 20 to 30 long posts could contain junk, so number of bytes posted isn't foolproof.

I can think of a couple of ways for getting around this fixed PM limit. One would be to have PMers open up essentially a "chat channel" for a limited time, and waive the limit when talking to specific recipients. You want to chat with me over PM? You click a button and I get asked whether I want to chat with you for the next 6 hours max. If I say "yes", you and I have unlimited PMs to each other for the next 6 hours, but the regular limits would apply to anyone else either of us want to send to. Incidentally, something more like a continuous text-based chat system would be easier to use than separate PMs.

The other way would be to have some sort of "karma" ranking, where people have voted on how useful your postings are, and the more postings you have made of higher quality (usefulness), the more PMs you're allowed. This might still be gamed by spammers, if they figure out a way to "up karma" each others' posts. SMF would have to monitor who is voting on whose postings (buyViagra is "upping" all of "sexPills"'s posts and vice-versa), looking for patterns of abuse, which could get complicated.

[LiroyvH]

Well, that's also a option,
login to the SMF IRC and have your conversation there

[metallica48423]

Well, we pretty much have to work in the limits of what SMF can do.  We don't normally use mods as a rule of thumb.  There's only a few that we do use and they were all written by current or former developers for the purposes of integrating the site, or for the support team.

Mods, especially those dealing with PM's, are pretty much not much of an option.  Partially because we also often run SVN versions, so we'd be continually updating another mod to keep it running.  We've been trying to streamline the process of upgrading the site here

[sotoremodelers]

yeah that 10 post an hour is kinda of weired, i understand there trying to keep spammers out but it hurts those in the community

[dragos240]

I bet theres some setting you can change to make it more than 10.

And a bit off topic.
@metallica48423: Awesome zelda avvy.