PM Message Rules - Members can avoid Admin PMs & Warning PMs

Started by xrunner, December 11, 2010, 08:39:46 AM

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danielwmoore

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.

emanuele

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


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danielwmoore

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.)

Antechinus


danielwmoore


Arantor

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

Kindred

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xrunner

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.  :)

Arantor

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

danielwmoore

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.

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