I was wondering if David can shed some light as to when or if the private message feature in a users profile will ever go live?

Or perhaps Michael Moretti, manager of Cigar Aficionado Online, has more info.

Guess not....

Around the time when we made the switch to this new software, we had a number of individuals posting on this site who spent way too much time attacking their fellow smokers than talking about cigars. I decided a PM feature would likely be used by them to continue the attack, so it hasn't been enabled. I feel like we'd just prefer to keep the discussion on the boards.

quote:

Originally posted by David Savona:
Around the time when we made the switch to this new software, we had a number of individuals posting on this site who spent way too much time attacking their fellow smokers than talking about cigars. I decided a PM feature would likely be used by them to continue the attack, so it hasn't been enabled. I feel like we'd just prefer to keep the discussion on the boards.

Cigarlive or one of those "other" boards has a very good message feature that is more of a public message than private. You can send a message to anyone, but it posts openly on the individuals profile screen. It also notifies you if you have such a posting in our inbox. That may be something that could work here, and since it is sort of public any abuses would be readily identifiable.

I know that I am new and have zero credibility; but, private messages help to develop friendships. I have been a member of another forum for some time and its a nice feature to communicate with others.

I can understand David's POV, but I have to disagree with it. You will always have an idiot who has nothing better to do than to attack board members rather than contribute something constructive to the board. The good thing about private messages is that they can be ignored and after a while of not getting any responses back, the idiot usually gets tired of wasting his time and goes away.

But on a public board, it's there for all to see and comment on. This does 2 negative things...1) it gives said idiot the attention they are looking for and 2) gives the board the reputation of being unfriendly and would likely push noobs away from joining. At least with PM's most of that stuff is kept between the arguing parties.

It would also make communicating alot easier for those people that don't like the idea of having their email address listed in their profile out of fear of spam. A good example is the PIF thread. Instead of making a post because a "mooch" doesn't have an email address, I can just PM them discretly for their shipping address rather than cluttering up the board with messages that don't need to be posted.

Just my opinion....

This message has been edited. Last edited by: The EVP,

The priority should be to keep the public content clean and consise. If having private msgs keeps some of the attacks/garbage off the public boards, all the better! Just make sure people can block each other.