1 private message was removed due to private message filters.

[ChrisGreaves]

"1 private message was removed due to private message filters." I saw this message this evening in the PM pane.
But there too I see "No rules defined.".

Is the received caution due to there being 60/60 messages in my Inbox?
Thanks, Chris

[HansV]

That might well be - we have no way to check that: your private messages are, well, private.

[ChrisGreaves]

That might well be - we have no way to check that: your private messages are, well, private.

"Folder is 83% full (50 out of 60 messages stored)"
Let me see what happens when I delete the 10 oldest messages then ...
Thanks, Chris

[ChrisGreaves]

Let me see what happens when I delete the 10 oldest messages then ...

Another day; rebooted this morning.
There is a charming new message from someone who shall remain nameless so as not to harm John Gray's reputation, but no sign of any backlogged PM.
That you-know-who's PM arrived after I posted publicly that I had deleted the 10 stalest messages, suggests that there is now no barrier to receiving PMs.
But that no earlier PM appeared suggests that the "filter" was not related to a full InBox.

So, If you have PMd me in the past three days and you have not received an anticipated reply, please, well, er, PM me and I will respond appropriately.

Cheers, Chris

[ChrisGreaves]

Happened again just now. I had 60 PM in my Inbox so I deleted the 3rd page (oldest PMs) and check again, only 50 messages, but nothing new.

So, If you have PMd me in the past three days and you have not received an anticipated reply, please, well, er, PM me and I will respond appropriately.

Cheers, Chris

[John Gray]

You have already responded in the manner which I was expecting!

[ChrisGreaves]

Is the received caution due to there being 60/60 messages in my Inbox?

Untitled.png

I remain confused over a full (60/60) Inbox for my Private Messages.
This morning another PM was filtered out.
I thought about a full InBox.
The snapshot above shows that I am, indeed, at 60/60.
I have the setting "Delete oldest messages" which is a little confusing ("oldest <plurals>") and I would rather like to see my figures drop - automatically - to, say, 50/60, then build up again, then drop to 50/60 and so on.

I think I understand this: My only action (so as not to lose any PMs) is to come in once a month and manually delete a block of messages. There seems to be no way to "delete until 10% is free".

I confess that I have not tried "move to another folder" because I suspect that when that folder is filled, I will once again be Blocked Right Up, but will then be consuming twice as much allocated space (once in the InBox and once in the "overflow")

Thanks " " of Bonavista

[HansV]

By creating a new folder in your PMs, you'll increase the number of PMs you can keep. You can move messages from your Inbox to the new folder.

[ChrisGreaves]

By creating a new folder in your PMs, you'll increase the number of PMs you can keep. You can move messages from your Inbox to the new folder.

Untitled.png

Thank you, Hans.
I have created a new folder with the imaginative name "20240621a" in case I get a flood of emails within the next six hours.
In theory my Inbox will overflow and some of its messages will be moved to 20240621a, yes?

If I'm VERY lucky I'll get, say, 60 new PMs in the next 24 hours and then a whole lot of PMs will automatically be shifted from the InBox to 20240621a.

We shall then see if dear old 20240621a then reaches its limit, causing me to contemplate creating a newer folder 20240621b; and so on.

I confess that I can't see much benefit in this. I see that by creating folders 60 PMs capacity every few months I will seem to be defeating the point of restricting the PM system to 60 Inbox PMs for any one person.

As Miss Howarth used to say 70 years ago "But what if we ALL did that, Christopher?"

Thanks, Chris

[HansV]

I scan my PMs from time to time. I move the ones that I'd like to keep to an archive folder, and delete the rest.

[stuck]

...As Miss Howarth used to say 70 years ago...

I was a school teacher from 1982 to 1989. The deputy headmistress of the school where I taught was not someone to tangle with, be you pupil or staff. She was called Miss Howarth.



Ken

[ChrisGreaves]

... the school where I taught ...

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Does this ring a school bell?
Cheers, Chris

[HansV]

Most schools ring a bell, albeit mostly an electric one nowadays...

[stuck]

I don't recognise that building.

Ken

[ChrisGreaves]

I don't recognise that building.

My Miss Howarth was headmistress at SunnyBank School, Manchester Road, Burnley in, I think, the early 1970s.
Cheers, Chris

[OneSecondStreet]

I confess that I can't see much benefit in this.

The whole PM thing in forums has the potential to be the most annoying thing about them. In another forum I've been on for years, up until about 7 years ago, there were limits on number of messages etc. But you could still create folders. I ended up creating new folders with names of people I regularly corresoponded with, but it was one of those things where you always felt "we've put a man on the moon...there must be a better way..." (Of course back then I was still naive about the whole man on the moon thing). Then, one day, the admins announced they had changed hosting companies or something and there were no longer any restrictions on PMs of any kind. It genuinely changed the whole feel of PMs and it was just one less thing you had to think about to enjoy your experience of it all.

Most schools ring a bell, albeit mostly an electric one nowadays...

Or cycle through incredibly annoying snippets of songs (which get changed every 1 - 3 weeks); which they think will somehow magically cause the students to want to go to class.

On this page I see there is a setting for phpBB (I think that's what's being used here, right?) for

Max private messages per box: This is the maximum number of private messages your users can have in each of their folders.

And down the bottom it says

If you want to set any of the above numerical settings so that the setting will allow unlimited amounts of the item, set the numerical setting to 0.

It seems to me this should be fairly straightforward to set this to zero and thereby reduce the annoyance/angst factor...

[DocAElstein]

I do like the Outbox feature here, which I don’t have on any other forums I frequent. (Your sent message "hangs there" in your Outbox until the recipient opens the PM, so you can edit or even delete it before they read it)

I like it because
_ You have an indication when they have read it, if they ever do. (I suppose this one is a debateable one, it slightly interferes with the privacy of the recipient as you know if they read it)
_ I often have second thoughts, or think later that maybe I could have worded something a bit better, so I can get an important message in quick, the best I can, but I may have the chance later to improve it when I have time, if the recipient has not got around to reading it yet
_ If something happens such that the message become redundant / unnecessary before it is read, you can delete it to help avoid confusion later
_ There is always that possible horror of sending something that later you really wish you hadn’t, so you may be lucky and can delete it if the recipient has not read it yet

(Strange - I just tested this for fun on a message to myself and the feature does not work, it skips the outbox. I sent one then to Chris, but then deleted it from my Outbox, and it vanished, so that should help to confuse if he gets notification of it …. :) )

( There might be time limits on these things, I don't know)

_.__________

I guess the controls on PMs will always be debatable. There is no easy answer, as it will always be a medium that bad people on the internet will try to misuse if they can, so you have to weigh that against the annoyance to others of not having more freedom and open limits.


Alan

[ChrisGreaves]

(Strange - I just tested this for fun on a message to myself and the feature does not work, it skips the outbox. I sent one then to Chris, but then deleted it from my Outbox, and it vanished, so that should help to confuse if he gets notification of it …. :) )

Thanks Alan.

Untitled2.png

The "C" in my user-name stands for "Click-bait is my middle name", which it isn't, so of course when I saw "Private Messages (1)" I had to go look ...

Confused? Me? Yes! But never by your behaviour ...

Clicking on that original "Private Messages (1)" took me to my Inbox where, as predicted by you, no PM appeared. (Unless by a co-incidence Ken or Hans or someone else also sent me a PM and changed their mind?)

But in the left-hand side panel under Private Messages I can see the folder "20240621(1), and Lo and Behold there is where you message would have been, entered as shown in the image above "This message was deleted by its author DocAElstrein"

The rule I set yesterday seems to divert all incoming PMs TO my new folder, leaving the default InBox full at 60/60. So it seems that YOUR PM to me was always destined to go to that new folder 20240621, and identified as such, the marker remaining there after you had deleted the PM.

Now are you confused?

I shall leave the Inbox as is and watch what happens over the next 59 days. Unless, I suppose, I care to drag a PM from the 60/60 Inbox to the 1/?? box "20240621".

Cheers, Chris

[DocAElstein]

Interesting. Good to know what happened. So I am not so confused yet on that one. So I did not completely hide my doings....
I expect I will think of something else to try some time...

[ChrisGreaves]

I expect I will think of something else to try some time...

Alan, your latest and deleted three PMs have not appeared.
Cheers, Chris