Pm's

[keenonfish]

How about if you have 50 posts then there is no wait, or something similar?

Not really logical, alot of new member use the PM fuction for various reasons to do with a fishless/fishin cycle and they get the one to one help from certain members through doing it this way. Sort of alienates the newer members which is never good for forum moral.

yes but if they have a time limit to reduce spammers abusing the pm system why should it effect people who have been members here for a long time and are not likely to abuse the system in any way. I would have suggested 10 posts but it would not be difficult for someone determined enough to get a small post count and then start the pm'ing.

Newbies could always use the chat for advice surely then anything private could be sent through a one off pm? I personally can't see why people chat with PM only anyway I tend to use just for sending personal details or arranging a private meet not for chatting but I guess that is just me! If I was selling something that would be different I guess but I would only expect lots of replies with a higher count and therefore would not expect a x minute delay!

 

[rdd1952]

Truck, can you post a sceen shot showing the times. Maybe we can figure something out from it.

How about if you have 50 posts then there is no wait, or something similar?

Not really logical, alot of new member use the PM fuction for various reasons to do with a fishless/fishin cycle and they get the one to one help from certain members through doing it this way. Sort of alienates the newer members which is never good for forum moral.

yes but if they have a time limit to reduce spammers abusing the pm system why should it effect people who have been members here for a long time and are not likely to abuse the system in any way. I would have suggested 10 posts but it would not be difficult for someone determined enough to get a small post count and then start the pm'ing.

Newbies could always use the chat for advice surely then anything private could be sent through a one off pm? I personally can't see why people chat with PM only anyway I tend to use just for sending personal details or arranging a private meet not for chatting but I guess that is just me! If I was selling something that would be different I guess but I would only expect lots of replies with a higher count and therefore would not expect a x minute delay!

The problem with using a minimum post count (it was set to 10 but may have been lowered again since we saw how easy it was to get around it) is that it's too easy to get around. I believe the time limit on posts is 20 to 30 seconds. We recently had a spammer that created their own thread and posted 10 times in 2 to 3 minutes and they had their 10 posts and were off to the PM system. This was after the 3 minute limit was set up and they still got out a couple hundred PMs even waiting the 3 minutes. Setting the number up to 20 wouldn't change much other than meaning everyone had to post again like before to be able to send a PM again and would limit newbies that join for the right reasons.

I don't know if the reason people are having so many problems is because they are using the system to chat but I agree on using the PM system for that purpose. We have live chat that can be used for that (you can open a private dialogue box for just the 2 of you) and Yahoo, AOL, etc. also have live IM functions that would be much quicker and easier than the PM system.

 

[aaronnorth]

After looking at the screen shot more closely, it looks as though that was only 2 minutes that it was making you wait. The time in the lower right corner shows 5:29 and the message says you can't send another until 5:31. I'm sure the differencce from 2 to 3 minutes would be from a slight delay in clicking to send another. I'll still bring it up to see what we can do.

I can asure you it is definatley 5.23.

Hence why AdAndrews posted a message at 5.25. (replying to my message!)

 

[rabbut]

Can you not just add a bit of server code blocking any PM from a member to another that happens to contain a link until they get x posts? Simply feed the PM to the app as a string and search for the link tabs in the string. If there, block the PM, otherwise let if go through? Keep the limit quiet to avoid issues with people working around it and just display a message if the PM gets blocked saying links cannot be sent via PM?

 

[rdd1952]

After looking at the screen shot more closely, it looks as though that was only 2 minutes that it was making you wait. The time in the lower right corner shows 5:29 and the message says you can't send another until 5:31. I'm sure the differencce from 2 to 3 minutes would be from a slight delay in clicking to send another. I'll still bring it up to see what we can do.

I can asure you it is definatley 5.23.

Hence why AdAndrews posted a message at 5.25. (replying to my message!)

Are you saying it was definitely 5:23 board time which would mean you waited about 6 minutes before trying to send another PM? The post that AdAndrews made was at 5:28 which, based on an actua time on your cock/watch of 5:23, would account for the 5 minutes difference between board and actual time.

rabbut, not certain what can and can't be done along those lines. Tolak could possibly answer that. I know they are still waiting on the update to come out (should have been out last fall) to see what is on it.

 

[aaronnorth]

5.23 My time (PC clock)
5.31 Board Time

So the board time is 5mins in front, so in essence, it is only 3mins. I get you now

 

[rdd1952]

Ok. Tolak is trying to figure why the board time keeps getting 5 minutes ahead. He said he just reset it not too long back and it's fast again.

Anyway, we are still trying to see what we can do to help with the PM situation. Obviously, the lower the time limit, the more attractive it is to spammers. The suggestion that rabbut made would be great but I haven't a clue if it's possible.

 

[rabbut]

I note from the times when you had 404 page not found errors that the board is running on Ubuntu Apatchy servers, so presumably has access to run Python scripts? If so, it should be possible if you can run third party code on the board...

All the best
Rabbut

 

[Tolak]

The deal is that the owner of this site is very hesitant to run third party codes & programs. As far as server code I will mention this to the server owner, who is different from the site owner.

I do appreciate your input on this, as I also wish there was a better way than a time limit, perhaps one of these ideas is workable.

 

[rabbut]

Well, you'd write your own code to do the trick, but implement it as you would if you were installing third party code.... This is why I was asking if you can run third party code on the board, as you will need that it add your own code to it as say a Python code module and avoid having to edit the board code itself and the resulting risk of "breaking" the board completely by the edit clashing with something else when you implement it. That limits a failure to the PM system (in theory, your mileage may vary) going down only if there is a bug in the Python module