Hidden Conversation Participants

ibnesayeed

Well-known member
It would be nice to have a feature of "Hidden Conversation Participants", "somewhat" similar to BCC feature of regular emails. Restriction to those hidden conversation participants may be that they are just read only participants and cannot reply in the same conversation thread.

Sometimes while talking to any member we need other Admins to be aware of what is going on, this feature will help a lot.
 
Upvote 11
This is a Bad Idea. It would promote abuse of power.

I will defend it this way:

- It has already been accepted and deployed by many Email servers/clients (in fact part of Email protocol as BCC)
- This exists in vB again in the form of BCC
- Admin example was just a use case to illustrate the point, otherwise pretty much every member can enjoy the feature. No limitation was requested for normal members.
- One can always have the same effect by simply creating another conversation thread with those "hidden participants" and post a copy of the ongoing conversation there. So it is no violation of anything. It is just convenience.
- I have never seen a note in any email client saying "there might be other people who have got a blind carbon copy of the same email", although if one is too concerned about privacy, they can add such a phrase in their site's privacy policy notes.

@Carlos I would love to know you perspective.
 
Lets say a member insults another member through PC - and that member has no intention of stopping? So, you report this problem to the administrator - and the attacker is hidden. In this instance, the "victim" looks like an idiot. That is, unless if the administrator checks out his PC history.
 
Lets say a member insults another member through PC - and that member has no intention of stopping? So, you report this problem to the administrator - and the attacker is hidden. In this instance, the "victim" looks like an idiot. That is, unless if the administrator checks out his PC history.

Either you are not following what I meant or I am not able to get your point correctly. Reporting a conversation is a different aspect that does not belong to this "hidden participant" feature. In reporting phenomenon, the person reporting anything is supposed to provide some feedback/reason to admins about why was that reported and there will be no one hidden when reported message will reach to admins. While my suggestion mainly mimics the BCC feature of usual emails. Let me explain it:

Suppose I and You run some sort of business which is somehow related and we agreed to make a deal. To discuss about that deal I started a conversation with you but I want my boss to know whatever is going on between us. Similarly you want your business partner to be aware of what is going on in the deal. So I can add my boss as hidden participant and you can add your partner as hidden participant. They will not take part directly in that conversation thread but they will watch everything and if they need to say something, they can always have another separate conversation thread with us. This way we will be able to avoid the pain of copying the whole conversation to them separately. Also it will ensure that what those hidden participants are seeing is the actual text not the "possibly" manipulated one, which will increase the transparency.
 
I'm not talking about the report feature, I'm talking about a hidden participant. This hidden participant can be hidden, and when an administrator JOINS the conversation and sees that there's nobody else in that conversation - while he issues a warning or whatnot.... The victim in question looks like he's talking to himself. 'Leaving a conversation.' does the same effect, but this is worse because the attacker in question can't be seen and the administrator would have to speak with him directly. Capische?
Suppose I and You run some sort of business which is somehow related and we agreed to make a deal. To discuss about that deal I started a conversation with you but I want my boss to know whatever is going on between us. Similarly you want your business partner to be aware of what is going on in the deal. So I can add my boss as hidden participant and you can add your partner as hidden participant. They will not take part directly in that conversation thread but they will watch everything and if they need to say something, they can always have another separate conversation thread with us. This way we will be able to avoid the pain of copying the whole conversation to them separately. Also it will ensure that what those hidden participants are seeing is the actual text not the "possibly" manipulated one, which will increase the transparency.
Very nice analogy. :)
 
Why would there be any conversation without at least two non-hidden participants? And if for some reason, your use case is considered to be valid, then why can't we make it possible for Admins to see all participants. A visual clue will always be there about who is active and who is hidden (Admins will see all and active participants will see only other active participants and those hidden ones whom they themselves have added into the conversation as hidden participants).

Also mind the point that hidden participants cannot write into that thread unless they are added/made as active participants. So there there is no point of insulting.

Mind that "Hidden" means "Dumb", not a "Deaf" here. :)
 
This is much needed feature. I currently run vb4 and I require my moderators to PM the user to explain any moderation actions they take. I also require them to BCC me on each of those PMs.

I very much need this feature.
 
Running something up the flagpole here...

Just a suggestion, would it be possible/good to have a "blind" inclusion of other (Staff level) people into a personal conversation as an adjunct to the Moderation process?

I just had a situation where I had to send a moderation PC to a member, and included another Admin in it as they need to know what is going on, but not necessarily to get involved in the conversation.

Would this be something other admins would want too?

There are some negatives to this, in that it could be abused by immature admins however. I would not like to think I was having a conversation with X and find out it was really with X, Y and Z

Not sure, perhaps there could be a Moderation checkbox, indicating to all involved that it is a moderation PM, and thus might be with invisible other Staff members or something.

Thoughts?
 
Similar suggestion for sure.

I did search for 'Blind' and I didn't get that popping up.

My suggestion is also slightly different, but merge away if you like.
 
I have just wanted to post my idea but found this one :)
would be nice to be implemented sth like this :

Add an option for thread creator to add hidden conversation participants (at any time).
They would see all posts but no other participant (exept thread creator) would know they are in a conversation.
They would not be allowed to post/replay in that conversation or do any action than leave.
If another user add that hidden user to conversation, he starts to be visible to all and has all rights as normal.
 
I have just wanted to post my idea but found this one :)
would be nice to be implemented sth like this :

Add an option for thread creator to add hidden conversation participants (at any time).
They would see all posts but no other participant (exept thread creator) would know they are in a conversation.
They would not be allowed to post/replay in that conversation or do any action than leave.
If another user add that hidden user to conversation, he starts to be visible to all and has all rights as normal.
Yes, essentially, that's how I plan to use it. This option is only allowed for certain member of admin group. There will be no reply option, it's more like a one-time announcement.
 
Revisiting this request, I wonder if there is something new in XF 2 that allow us to do the following:
Allow a moderator to send a message to a number of members without showing the recipients. The method of sending could be via conversations or through ACP Message Users functions. I am unsure if moderators have access to certain functions in ACP.
 
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