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Private Messages as threads

Posted by niko26 
Private Messages as threads
July 01, 2007 02:43PM
Is there any mods which enables you to have PM's as threads? Right now PM's are "stateless", you can't really follow a discussion as each reply gets a new PM. I would like to have something like a thread, just between a set of users.
Re: Private Messages as threads
July 01, 2007 02:50PM
No, there aren't any and I guess its quite a lot of work to do this.


Thomas Seifert
Re: Private Messages as threads
July 01, 2007 03:39PM
I thought it was quite easy to implement, you just have to make sure that only certain people can view the PM-thread.

:-(

Thanks for the answer.
Re: Private Messages as threads
July 01, 2007 05:19PM
A thread between a set of people... we call that a forum ;-)
But without kidding: it's not an easy mod to do. This would not take a mod, but a rewrite of the private messaging system.

Making sure that only certain people can view the PM-thread sounds like the wrong implementation for this. Each message should simply contain some data about the message that is being replied to. If a user has both the message and it's parent in the mailbox, then they can be shown threaded. If you are making the messages persistent for the people that were in the discussion at some point, then you really would mimic a forum system and no longer a mail system.


Maurice Makaay
Phorum Development Team
my blog linkedin profile secret sauce
Re: Private Messages as threads
July 02, 2007 06:21AM
Quote

If you are making the messages persistent for the people that were in the discussion at some point, then you really would mimic a forum system and no longer a mail system.
Correct. I just thought this would be the better approach, as it is what is used on one of the forums I am regularily using ( www.scratchlive.net/forum ). Very clean forum, good layout, etc.
Re: Private Messages as threads
July 23, 2007 01:11AM
I think one of the issues is that PM's really are different and while it might be nice, if something requires so much 'conversation' then it is probably a topic worthy of an actual discussion on a forum bringing in multiple viewpoints and participants.

I also think one approach if someone were to make a 'threadedPM' mod would be to simply (and I use the word loosely)....
create a 'group' between the participants in the PM, and handle it as a group permissions based thread, however, that's a tremendous amount of data to maintain.

effectively you have to create a group for every pair of users, and then possibly for every 3 and every 4, etc.. .. over time it could build to be a large database, so now it's probably not a good idea.... :P

Maurice's approach is probably a lot more efficient, but would require a hack and a database modification, so it's probably not a good idea anyway.
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