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Notice Conversations Enhanced Announcement - Updated 7/6/2018

Vekseid

Most imposing inkwell.
Administrator
Joined
Jan 8, 2009
Hello @everyone. Be the time you all see this, you may already notice a number of new features:

1) The ability to search your inbox has been greatly expanded.

Just toggle what you want to search for appropriately, and click on the 'filter' button. Note that any given search is a full url, so if you want to add all your conversations with someone to a bookmark, just search for them as a recipient and bookmark the result.

2) The addition of conversation folders for you to organize your private conversations.

In order to maximize performance, these work rather simply - you can't reorganize folders, only rename them. If a folder's name is empty and is at the end of the list, it will be 'deleted', but this won't remove any conversations from that group, nor will it delete any conversations.

Currently I've set the limit to 20 folders, but the limit is arbitrary, so if people want more, just ask. There is no meaningful limit.

3) Tracking privacy is now implemented, but not tracking itself.

I decided to hold off on the immediate release of tracking to allow users to be made aware of and set their desired privacy settings accordingly.

Your account privacy settings govern your conversations globally.

- Anyone you ignore is not going to be able to track your conversations at all.

- The plan is to only enable tracking for 'non-Probationary' members - those with at least five posts and a day of activity.

- Many people who were hidden before conversion got transferred over as 'none' for various privacy details. Note that you can also set it to 'people you follow', to allow your friends here to see your activity. Keep in mind going full stealth here can make it problematic for your partners to wonder whether you are even reachable.

- I have seen a few complaining about partners dropping them when they had stealthy privacy settings. Consider at least following your partners and letting them see what's up.

You will also notice, in the inline moderation of your conversations and in the conversation view itself, the ability to reject/allow tracking for individual conversations.

---------------------------

Once Tracking is Implemented

Participants in a conversation will have their name prefixed with an icon representing their status in the conversation, and possibly an alteration to their avatar:

- You (I presume you know if you've read the conversation you are currently reading)
- Read
- Unread
- Tracking Blocked

I haven't chosen the specific icons for the first three yet.

You'll only be able to see read status from within a conversation view. The query this needs is pretty monstrous and it isn't a very good idea to do this to dozens of conversations at once.

-----------------------------

Addressing PM Spammers

During BMR's tenure we've had issues with a few PM spammers. While this hasn't overwhelmed things, we've discussed the possibility of restricting PMs to members who meet a certain post count. This wasn't actually an option in Xenforo by default, but now... it is.

The plan is to require members to reach the 'non-probationary' threshold (5 post and a day old) in order to send PMs. This will happen sometime after tracking is added.

So long as you have 5 posts anywhere on the board but Forum Games as it doesn't count towards your post total, you're all set. The single post requirement is basically a "I'm not a spammer" check, so to speak.
----------------------------

I hope you enjoy the rework, and thank you for your patience, everyone. : )

Feel free to ask any questions in this thread.

Obligatory Patreon Reminder
 
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You've been doing a knockout job, Vekseid! From the transition of EVERYTHING to the new system, to the settings of the system itself. It's really user-friendly, and wonderful for keeping track of conversations.

Also, I am certainly up on the idea of someone having their profile be over 24 hours old, and/or they've posted 5 times. While I'm not sure that I'd call the person spam, I do admit that periodically, I've gotten a simple, short-ish message from a soul seeking to game, and it's always the same setting & character idea on their part, but ALWAYS it's a different handle. A few times I've gamed/written with them, and they're kind and all, but after signing off for the night, they disappear. A few days later, they'll touch base again, again with a different name, saying that their roommate pranked them by getting into their account and changed the password, and they had to create a new account. Again, I've got nothing against this person, whomever they are, but I'm left with the suspicion that I'm not the only one getting the blanket messages.
 
I used to be on another site that couldn't upgrade, switch or make any changes without major offline issues for a week.
I am very impressed with BlueMoon and its staff.
Keep up the good work, guys and gals.
 
So we have to introduce ourselves again if we haven't already? And are five posts made once enough or do you mean five per day?
 
You don't have to re-introduce yourself, but making an intro if you haven't already or popping in to say hello to some of the new members are great and easy ways to start getting involved if you don't have five posts yet.

You would not need to make five posts every day, just five total.
 
If you're copying an image link, it can help to make sure you're on the https version of the site. Most major sites support both rather than auto-redirecting you to https as BMR does.
 
Heh... I never actually made an intro post when I joined however many years ago it was. I just joined and lurked for ages before actually starting to write here.

Do I need to make an intro post now? >.>
 
Nobody needs to, but if you have less than 5 posts it's a good way to get a few up. You have 700 so you're in the clear, Sync :)
 
Yes. You can view the individual folders using the filtering system along the top of the conversations list.
 
Vek,

I know you and Machiavelli figured out a solution for my mass copy/paste method for converting private threads to offsite docs. Can I just ask that you and/or Machiavelli to post about it and how to work it once Mach finishes it? If I recall right you mentioned it was just a dumbed down style sheet that you can click on and off or something? It'd be greatly appreciated. Love you guys. Thanks for all the hard work.
 
@Vekseid

So, I left a conversation with the option of not getting notified of new messages, but now I'm stuck with my inbox showing I have a new message, despite it not showing up. Or at least I assume that's the case. Any workaround for that?
 
Yeah, the list just comes up empty. If someone else sends me a message it shows up, but from what I can gather the system treats that left conversation as completely invisible, but still bugs me that there was a reply to it.

Edit: Any chance for a mark all PMs as read function? I would assume that would solve it.
 
Temporarily, yes, I believe. Once things are settled/working we do plan to lower it to just 1 post instead of 5.
 
Clarification request: For sub-5-post accounts, what exactly is the effect on their PM/Conversations ability? Is it still correct that they can receive Conversations? But more importantly, what exactly does "cannot send PMs" mean--does it mean they only cannot -begin- a Conversation with another user, or does it mean they flat-out cannot respond to any Conversations even if another user starts it with them?
 
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