IPB 4.0 Messenger - User Interaction Failure

[TracyIsland]

Hi -

I pride myself on my ability to see the ipboard through the eyes of a casual user, and using my oft-cited mantra, 'Don't Make Me Think,' I find that the 4.0 Messenger is making me search and think and now scream bloody murder. 

I wanted to send a new PM.  I got a pop up that my message box is full and that I need to empty some of the messages. I have searched everywhere for a simple, universally understandable word like 'delete' and cannot find one.  Unless one of you is willing to step into a transporter and appear next to me at my desk, how am I, the casual user, supposed to instantly grasp how to delete a message?

Does 'leave a conversation' equal delete a message? How in the world am I supposed to know that? I just use the board, and communicate, and I would hope every developer on here would understand that this is exactly what a casual user does.

Recommendation: add text or change the language string or make it more obvious, with a trash can icon perhaps, to understand how to delete a PM.

And would someone please reply and tell me how to delete a PM because for the life of me, I still have not figured it out!!!  Acckkkkkkkkkkkkkkkk

Brian

[3DKiwi]

My understanding is you can't delete conversations aka personal messages. You can only leave a conversation. Other parties to the conversation still have access to the conversation until they leave. Problem with that is many people are lazy and won't bother. The database is going to end up over time being bloated by old and useless conversations.

IPS - correct me if I'm wrong.

I as an admin want the ability to delete a conversation so that it's gone completely so that no one has access to it anymore. I also want the ability to mass delete conversations based on search criteria e.g. over 12 months old.

[Arai]

Yeah I don't get the logic behind not being able to delete messages your see fit, even worse is that leaving the conversation notifies the other party.

You guys are right, there is no other way to spin this, individual deletion should have been present.

Conversation is handy, but being able to delete messages you see fit should have been there from the get go.

 

[Morrigan]

Leaving conversation was implemented in IPB 3.0 and it is correct that you must "Leave" to in essence "delete" a conversation. This was the way that conversations worked that way other participants could hang onto them if they wanted to.

[TracyIsland]

Leaving conversation was implemented in IPB 3.0 and it is correct that you must "Leave" to in essence "delete" a conversation. This was the way that conversations worked that way other participants could hang onto them if they wanted to.

Ahhh, okay, now I get it, at least how to remove some of my messages.  Although your explanation of "hang on" better helped me understand the developers' motivations, I still think for the casual user (not admin and moderators), it is clearer to use icons (an "X" or a trash can), along with a tool tip that better explains what happens to the PM. 

To the developers: why the need for the explanation and a tooltip? Because a casual user may not understand that the other party may be able to hold on to the PM when it is deleted.  The casual user may think they are erasing all history of xyz drama. 

Further recommendation: in view of the @3DKiwi and @Arai, it would make the most sense to add a setting the ACP that either allowed a full deletion (gives the superadmin the right to set the rules for his/her db/community by either staying with the IPS default 'leaving conversation' (aka one-sided deletion) or full on deletion)

Thanks for your reply.

Brian

[Morrigan]

For the time being @surferboy You can also use the translation tool to change the verbiage for your members to better understand in the time being to "Remove Conversation". For me the change won't be useful as the verbiage hasn't changed from 3.0 to 4.0 so my end users are used to it.

[TracyIsland]

Thanks for the clarification.  Somehow it seemed easier (read readily apparent) to me how to delete messages in 3.x

One additional item I do want to mention here as product feedback is the lack of structural integrity with a message that has one of the participants as 'left the conversation.'  What I mean by that is there is no pop up, no warning, no error message if you post a reply to a current message with the other participant marked as 'left the conversation.'  Since that status is greyed out, it isn't obvious to the casual user. 

Someone please correct me if I am wrong but if I post a reply to a PM that only has me remaining in the conversation (meaning the other party has left the conversation), the reply is accepted and appears to have been sent but in fact it goes nowhere.  To me that is a really serious flaw. 

Thanks,

 

Brian

[Marcher Technologies]

Personal Conversations are not the 1-1 structure you seem to think they are? That reply in the example above is still saved to the database, and participants can be added....

If one person blasts another in the pm with hate, and then leaves, the other user has the ability to add a moderator for it to be handled if needed this way.

[TracyIsland]

Personal Conversations are not the 1-1 structure you seem to think they are? That reply in the example above is still saved to the database, and participants can be added....

If one person blasts another in the pm with hate, and then leaves, the other user has the ability to add a moderator for it to be handled if needed this way.

Okay, good point on that but ... the misleading portion still exists ... that being the belief that the reply is actually going to the other person in the conversation who casual users may not realize have 'left the conversation.'  I did that twice in sending a PM to Kevin Carwile here on this board. I kept wondering why he had not replied.  It was only on careful triple checking that I discovered he had left the conversation ... and even then, I didn't know what that meant (again think of me as the bread and butter of any community, the casual user), and it was only after going back and forth with this topic and with the messenger that I then understood that two replies that I had sent to Kevin never in fact reached him.

[Lindy]

So, simplify this for me please. Are you asking for the messenger to work more like Facebook? 

"Leave conversation" would do just that, but retain what you already have. 

"Delete conversation" would do the above AND delete what you already have (your copy.)

I don't think we're interested in allowing any participant of a conversation to actually delete the conversation from the database. Nothing I know of behaves that way. What should happen (and I'll confirm if it does) is the last participant to leave a conversation should trigger it being deleted from the database. We could look into pruning options based on age on an admin level. 

 

[4themusicman]

Thanks for the clarification.  Somehow it seemed easier (read readily apparent) to me how to delete messages in 3.x

One additional item I do want to mention here as product feedback is the lack of structural integrity with a message that has one of the participants as 'left the conversation.'  What I mean by that is there is no pop up, no warning, no error message if you post a reply to a current message with the other participant marked as 'left the conversation.'  Since that status is greyed out, it isn't obvious to the casual user. 

Someone please correct me if I am wrong but if I post a reply to a PM that only has me remaining in the conversation (meaning the other party has left the conversation), the reply is accepted and appears to have been sent but in fact it goes nowhere.  To me that is a really serious flaw. 

Thanks,

 

Brian

Yes that happens. The other person can send you a message within the conversation and they think you got it but if you left the conversation you won't get squat. Of course that can lead to bad feelings because they will think you are ignoring them since for them the message got sent. 

The whole "leave a conversation" is not intuitive at all. 

And Lindy, not to hijack this thread but since you are here and this has to do with messages: as an Admin I am having a major headache in that there is no way to send a group pm with a Blind CC so that others aren't aware I am sending the pm to the others. We are all part of one giant conversation. So instead I have to send out 200+ individual pms. And of course there is no way to mass delete this other than to individually delete it if I don't need a copy of it. Is this a feature and not a bug? It is causing me major extra work.

 

 

[3DKiwi]

Admins should have the capacity to delete conversations regardless of whether people have left or not. I can think of a number of reasons for wanting to delete a conversation e.g. a new member spams a whole heap of other members via the conversation system. Wouldn't you want to delete all traces of these conversations?

Assuming the Admin doesn't delete a conversation (usually because they weren't involved) then the conversation should be deleted from the database after the last person leaves.

Then, I would like some sort of mass deletion option to delete conversations where no reply has been posted for x amount of days e.g. 365 days. That then keeps the database size down. I can see some lazy members not deleting conversations. I don't want these redundant conversations wasting database space.

[Lindy]

Yes that happens. The other person can send you a message within the conversation and they think you got it but if you left the conversation you won't get squat. Of course that can lead to bad feelings because they will think you are ignoring them since for them the message got sent. 

The whole "leave a conversation" is not intuitive at all. 

And Lindy, not to hijack this thread but since you are here and this has to do with messages: as an Admin I am having a major headache in that there is no way to send a group pm with a Blind CC so that others aren't aware I am sending the pm to the others. We are all part of one giant conversation. So instead I have to send out 200+ individual pms. And of course there is no way to mass delete this other than to individually delete it if I don't need a copy of it. Is this a feature and not a bug? It is causing me major extra work.

 

 

For the first part, I'd almost call that a bug - we can look into that. 

For the second part, what's an example use-case for BCCing PMs? Why wouldn't you use the bulk mailer at that point instead of creating 200 conversations?

Admins should have the capacity to delete conversations regardless of whether people have left or not. I can think of a number of reasons for wanting to delete a conversation e.g. a new member spams a whole heap of other members via the conversation system. Wouldn't you want to delete all traces of these conversations?

Assuming the Admin doesn't delete a conversation (usually because they weren't involved) then the conversation should be deleted from the database after the last person leaves.

Then, I would like some sort of mass deletion option to delete conversations where no reply has been posted for x amount of days e.g. 365 days. That then keeps the database size down. I can see some lazy members not deleting conversations. I don't want these redundant conversations wasting database space.

Flag them as a spammer. I did say we'd look into pruning options. 

[chilihead]

I saw in another post they are adding the ability to mass delete PMs, which means you would also be able to delete just one from the list of PMs. That should make it a little more intuitive. From that I gathered. 

[TracyIsland]

So, simplify this for me please. Are you asking for the messenger to work more like Facebook? 

"Leave conversation" would do just that, but retain what you already have. 

"Delete conversation" would do the above AND delete what you already have (your copy.)

I don't think we're interested in allowing any participant of a conversation to actually delete the conversation from the database. Nothing I know of behaves that way. What should happen (and I'll confirm if it does) is the last participant to leave a conversation should trigger it being deleted from the database. We could look into pruning options based on age on an admin level. 

 

Hi Lindy,

Well we don't use Facebook as a message platform per se.  From time to time, people send messages and we reply but I'm not real familiar or accustomed to using Facebook. In fact, I have a hard time finding the message area or the posted links since we mostly just post news on our page.

The same applies for Twitter but I did take a look at my Galaxy S5 phone just now and I clicked on the icon for messages and saw there were two.  I noticed the symbol at the top for more details with the screen (I think they are like 3 vertical dots).  When I clicked on that, I got a drop down that was very intuitive to me.  There are four choices:

• Add people
• Turn off notifications
• Delete conversation
• Settings

That is extremely intuitive to me. 

I'll send you a pm with some other, private observations but to me, the words 'Delete conversation' or 'Delete message' is extremely intuitive and meaningful, as a casual user. Anybody gets that.  Now, I do get what some are saying, and you as well, that deleting the conversation altogether may not be a good idea.  It's kind of like having a sent folder where you can refer to the conversation.  But I do think having the ability to 'delete' is important, from the point of view of the initiator of the message.  The action would have two effects: the first would be to archive the message for reference but it could not be reengaged, and second, the action of 'deletion' would show up on the 'invited participants' end as showing the message is closed for further communication.  How would it look? Maybe some kind of red color or word that says the message is closed.  Now what about people on the receiving end of a message? They should be able to delete as well.  Whether or not it is saved in an archive is probably up for debate - perhaps the act of their deletion could create a query such as "would you like to receive an email copy of this conversation" much like online support chats do? If the person says no, then it gets deleted from the receiver's records.  To me, if the receiver has deleted the message or to entertain your wording usage, 'left the conversation,' that person should not longer appear in the header portion of the message as being a part of the message.  If the sender is the only person still standing, so to speak, then you might have some kind of word that appears that says something like 'all recipients have deleted this message.'

Again, for me, as a casual user, I want to look at my list of messages and see a trash icon or an 'X' and simply delete the message.  What happens to it is not my concern, as a casual user.  Asking for an email copy before deletion would be really nice and a way to address the overflow in the database.

I realize there are lots of various possible scenarios involved here what with multiple participants and how to handle them.  To me, the sender has the priority, and if he marks it for deletion, then the receiver should be notified that the pm has been closed and would they like a copy sent via email, and if not, it will be deleted now.

Hope that helps and thanks for listening!

Brian

[4themusicman]

Lindy, because what I am doing via pm is not something we do via email. It is board centric and if people want to participate they need to be on the board. Our board also goes back to 2004.  Email addresses may not be current. Pms however always go through.

[crabpaws]

Delete of a pm thread should be a readily accessible button or link at the top and bottom of each thread, not buried in a drop-down menu at the top. It must be one of the most common actions, given that storage space is limited.

Also, download of pm threads should be enabled again. Some conversations need to be saved.