4 years later, still no PMs?
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@BrotherGlaucon said in Private messaging:
Over at Misago there are no private messages, there are only "private threads," which is really the same thing, and it also reveals the difference between a PM system and a chat system. A PM is basically a private thread with a limited number of participants. It is content-rich, threaded, and approached by all parties in a long-term sort of way.
So you are a Misago shill trying to promote them here by accidentally saying that they copied the system from here?
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@scottalanmiller said in Private messaging:
This entire thread is about using the PM system. We've had PMs on NodeBB since I can remember.
Then how do I use them? Are you confusing PMs with chat?
If I missed the feature, then I am to blame. But if you haven't understood my post, then you are to blame. I specifically talked about the difference between PM's and chat via private threads...
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@BrotherGlaucon said in Private messaging:
@scottalanmiller said in Private messaging:
This entire thread is about using the PM system. We've had PMs on NodeBB since I can remember.
Then how do I use them? Are you confusing PMs with chat?
If I missed the feature, then I am to blame. But if you haven't understood my post, then you are to blame. I specifically talked about the difference between PM's and chat via private threads...
You can't just make a new definition. There is a PM/chat system here. It's both a chat and a PM feature. It has both covered. You just select the person you want to PM and it is a private chat with them. The ability to talk to groups of people exists, too.
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@BrotherGlaucon said in Private messaging:
If I missed the feature, then I am to blame.
As the developer said in the post that you responded to: "The current chat feature has no difference than a PM system."
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@cytrax said in Private messaging:
Something as simple as PM system is what a new prospect would look at it. I read somewhere within the forums that it would be great for gaming sites to adopt NobeBB. Well, I am that guy from a gaming site that's looking to start using NobeBB. And I can tell you that it would a deal breaker for my users if I try to force them to use a system without PM. Actually, I would get stones thrown and me and threats made against my dog. lol
Yes, I agree. Did you have any luck finding a workaround for PM's in NodeBB? What were your findings in this area?
(Sorry for the long interval - just had to try to pick your brain!)
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@BrotherGlaucon said in Private messaging:
@cytrax said in Private messaging:
Something as simple as PM system is what a new prospect would look at it. I read somewhere within the forums that it would be great for gaming sites to adopt NobeBB. Well, I am that guy from a gaming site that's looking to start using NobeBB. And I can tell you that it would a deal breaker for my users if I try to force them to use a system without PM. Actually, I would get stones thrown and me and threats made against my dog. lol
Yes, I agree. Did you have any luck finding a workaround for PM's in NodeBB? What were your findings in this area?
(Sorry for the long interval - just had to try to pick your brain!)
There's no workaround as it has PMs. What do you expect the PMs to do that they aren't doing today?
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@scottalanmiller I PM'd you so that you could see it in action.
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@scottalanmiller said in Private messaging:
@BrotherGlaucon said in Private messaging:
If I missed the feature, then I am to blame.
As the developer said in the post that you responded to: "The current chat feature has no difference than a PM system."
My post was a direct response to that claim, and you clearly missed this. Chat does not work like PMs. Chat is not "content-rich, threaded, and approached by all parties in a long-term sort of way."
To give an example regarding threading, if I want to have two separated conversations with a single individual or group, this is not possible with chat, no? "Content rich" means the ability to include all of the markup and detail that is available in posts, etc...
And the reason I posted in an old thread is because I assumed that the battle lost, and the damage done, years ago. I simply wanted to cast my vote and provide others with an opportunity to correct any misconception that I may have been laboring under. I really like NodeBB and I have spent a lot of time with it this week, but the lack of PM blindsided me.
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@BrotherGlaucon said in Private messaging:
My post was a direct response to that claim, and you clearly missed this. Chat does not work like PMs. Chat is not "content-rich, threaded, and approached by all parties in a long-term sort of way."
That's not what chat means. You missed that we had already said that the two were the same and that you can't make up your own definition. That's not what chat means. As someone who has run commercial chat systems for decades, I can tell you that that's neither technically correct, nor colloquially correct, or implies in any way whatsoever.
Standard chat systems from nearly any vendor ever have not worked that way. Both chat and PM terms have always overlapped when chat systems allowed privitization of channels and both have been lean when rich media was difficult and both rich when it was available.
There is no separation between the two except when chat is non-private. PM is just chat that is private. There is no other definition.
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@BrotherGlaucon said in Private messaging:
To give an example regarding threading, if I want to have two separated conversations with a single individual or group, this is not possible with chat, no?
That's an assumption that has no basis in reality. That it is chat does not imply one way or the other. You are acting like chat and PM are technical terms for specific technologies or approaches, but they are not. They are common sense English language terms for usages of messaging systems. One thing that is universal, all PM systems are chat systems, a few rare chat systems don't support PMs. That's it.
NodeBB has both in every sense.
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@BrotherGlaucon said in Private messaging:
And the reason I posted in an old thread is because I assumed that the battle lost, and the damage done, years ago. I simply wanted to cast my vote and provide others with an opportunity to correct any misconception that I may have been laboring under. I really like NodeBB and I have spent a lot of time with it this week, but the lack of PM blindsided me.
This makes no sense as it has PM. Messages that are private. I sent you a message to show.
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@meetdilip When I thumbed up your comment (lesser emails the better), likes went to zero as you had a negative -1 there already.
It got me thinking I'd rather not have netting off of likes and dislikes, is there a way to show both?Reason being a post could score netzero, and be +100 -100, i.e. a highly emotive issue, or +0 -0, where nobody's bothered, and they turn out the same score!
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Let me say at the outset that I think NodeBB is a great piece of software. This discussion focuses on one particular flaw (as I see it). That does not invalidate the broader software, which is excellent. I am writing more than I intended, but hopefully the criticism is helpful...
@scottalanmiller said in Private messaging:
@BrotherGlaucon said in Private messaging:
To give an example regarding threading, if I want to have two separated conversations with a single individual or group, this is not possible with chat, no?
That's an assumption that has no basis in reality. That it is chat does not imply one way or the other. You are acting like chat and PM are technical terms for specific technologies or approaches, but they are not. They are common sense English language terms for usages of messaging systems. One thing that is universal, all PM systems are chat systems, a few rare chat systems don't support PMs. That's it.
NodeBB has both in every sense.
All you seem to be saying, over and over again, is that you disagree that private messages are private threads, and that your definition must magically be the true one.
Well I am not here to play word games. The main point is that NodeBB does not support private messaging as I, and many others in this thread, understand that term. Redefining terms does not magically create new features within NodeBB. Anyone coming from long-form forums expects private messaging to have the basic features I outlined.
Further, there is a crucial flaw in your understanding of these terms. Private messaging mirrors public messaging. Traditionally, forums which have content-rich public messaging also have content-rich private messaging. Thus the base framework should support that mirror-ability. The nature of private messaging does vary from forum to forum, but it always mirrors the nature of the public messaging. 'Chat' has no real relation to the nature of the public messaging, and is of its very nature short-form.*
The anthropological error is perhaps most instructive. Human beings are social creatures who share most readily and deeply in private settings, and with only a very small group of people. This is why humans have more acquaintances than friends, and it is why they tend to have very few deep friendships. When friendships deepen they become more private and unique. This means that in human life "private messaging" is always higher-resolution than "public messaging." Of course there may be use cases where this fact of human life is disregarded or prescinded from, but to build an entire framework in a way that caters to a false anthropology is surely problematic.
* This means that although NodeBB attempts to "stay true to the original bulletin board/forum format," it has dropped the ball in a crucial area, and has thereby shoehorned itself into relatively short-form forums (just like all of the other new forum software).
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@BrotherGlaucon I ended up forking out this more recent discussion (though a link to this topic was left behind in the old discussion, so that should function well).
To give an example regarding threading, if I want to have two separated conversations with a single individual or group, this is not possible with chat, no? "Content rich" means the ability to include all of the markup and detail that is available in posts, etc...
This is possible with the chat system. You can have multiple, separate chats with a single user, or a group of users.
Any and all markup available in the regular topics is available in chats. The chat just doesn't use the same full composer that the posts do, but if you're using the same markup plugins (e.g. markdown), then the same syntax applies to both. Any embed plugins apply to both, etc.
So hopefully that should assuage your concerns that our chat is deficient in some way, shape, or form, because in the backend, chats and PMs are quite literally identical in many many ways.
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Hi @julian, thank you for your generous response. Sorry for being persnickety earlier. I suppose it was a matter of poking and getting poked.
I confirmed everything you said and this makes me very happy. May I ask two questions?
- Is it the default setting that chat messages are never deleted, and that users always have access to all of their past messages? Or do old messages get popped off the visible "stack" after x number of messages?
- The default max-post-length is 32767 and the default max-chat-length is 1000. My assumption was that this is because the database structures and allocation for the two are significantly different. Perhaps I was also happily mistaken about this?
Thank you
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@BrotherGlaucon It's an arbitrary limit, the max chat length is defined only because the frontend UX is more constrained relative to posts.
As far as I know, posts do not get popped off the visible stack. Additional posts are loaded as you scroll backwards in time.
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@julian said in 4 years later, still no PMs?:
This is possible with the chat system. You can have multiple, separate chats with a single user, or a group of users.
Is this possible with the default themes, or does it require customization? I see how to rename a room but I haven't figured out how to start a new chat-thread with the same person or group.
(I am hoping that chat can provide a solution for back-and-forth remediation of flagging disputes between a moderator and a user whose post has been flagged, but I would like these interactions to be self-contained and removable rather than part of a single ongoing chat-thread.)
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Yeah it's possible out of the box. On a user's profile you can click the chat button which will continue your last chat or start a new chat if you don't have one. If you already have a chat with them you can use the dropdown and start a new chat.
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Excellent, thank you @baris.
