Geeklog Forums

A while back I got an e-mail saying that I had a private message, and that I could get it at http://www.geeklog.net/messenger/index.php. I went there, but my Inbox showed 0 messages. I figured it was maybe a false notification, so I ignored it.

Today I got another e-mail, this one saying "You still haven't replied to your private message". But no PMs show up when I log in. I've tried using Safari, Firefox and Camino. Same story.

So, are the PMs working? Do I have a PM? If so, how do I retrieve it?

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Kevin Horton

Just sent a message to you ( rv8 ) in Private Messenger here. As far as I can tell, it seems to work. There is however, a CSS issue when viewing previews. Text color is blending in with the background color.

Michael

Yes, that private message worked. Thanks. I didn't get an e-mail notification for it though, nor for another PM that was sent last night. Not sure whether this is a temporary glitch on the GL site, or an over anxious spam filter somewhere. The notifications didn't make it to my spam catcher.

The mystery of the original dissappearing message may be solved. The guy who sent the first one (that was not there when I looked for it) sent me another one last night saying "I guess like in PHPbb, deleting my message from my Outbox folder deletes your inbox message too. That was what I did last week." I'll figure out where to file a bug report on this.

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Kevin Horton

It is not a bug but a feature of glMessenger. Only 1 copy of the message exists and the sender can delete from their outbox if the message has not been read yet. It is moved to the send folder once received and then it can not be deleted.

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Geeklog components by PortalParts -- www.portalparts.com

It is reasonable for the user to believe that sending PMs is like sending e-mail. Generally speaking, once you click "Send" in an e-mail client, the message is sent, and there is no harm to deleting it. It seems that glMessenger works differently than some (many?) users may expect.

Does the sender get any notification that by deleting the message in the Outbox he will prevent the recipient from receiving it? If not, then this seems like a design problem.

In my case, the sender, despite having deleted the message from his Outbox, believed that he had successfully sent PM. The only person who suspects there is a problem is the recipient, who gets an e-mail saying that a PM was sent, but he finds no PM in his Inbox. But the recipient cannot know who to contact to tell them to resend the message.

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Kevin Horton

Indeed like e-mail, phpBB has 2 copies - one in outbox/inbox and one in sent, but it goes even further and dissapears the message from the outbox into sent once it's read (so you know for sure it's read). And best of all, while it's unread you can change your message (here you can just delete it)!

Here you can't even tell if your message was read (just if it was deleted).

Maybe a compromise could be to have 2 copies too, but to add a "save a copy in sent folder" option (right now users have no options at all) and have it set to off by default.

Not true at all - as I noted above, the message disappears from the sender's outbox once the message is read. It will then only appear in the sent folder. It will continue to appear in the 'sent' folder until the last recepient deletes it.

Having only 1 copy of the message means you can send out a message to 100 users and only 1 copy is stored. This is useful if you send out a site broadcast message.

Add the Buddy Admin, Smilie Admin, Integration into the User Profile and native integration with the forum plugin - it becomes a useful site feature. Well atleast the 100's of sites that are running feel so

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Geeklog components by PortalParts -- www.portalparts.com

You're right, I was wrong about that (if only I could edit after 15 minutes or whatever...). But I still like to be able to edit my unread messages and delete my read yet undeleted messages - it's really a pain to have messages from 2004 because the other side doesn't like to delete messages. It should be my choice and not theirs.

Maybe don't create 2 copies, but make displaying the copy in sent a choice for each message (saying "no", when you send a message, would just hide it in the sent box).

BTW, I don't see the integration in this site. I have to send manually.

How about a confirmation dialog when a user tries to delete a PM from his Outbox? Something like "Warning - if you delete this message it will also be deleted from the recipients's Inbox, and they will not recieve the message." The dialog box buttons could be "Delete" and "Cancel".

And, if a message was deleted from an Outbox, send the intended recipients an e-mail saying "The PM you were informed about earlier has been deleted by the sender".

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Kevin Horton