Private Conversations - What are you experiences?

[planetzu]

Hello,

I am planning to open private conversation rights to all members (once they post a certain number of messages on the board) and want to know how your experiences have been with the same.

1.) Do you think it's beneficial to allow Private conversations from the forum growth perspective?

2.) Should you or should you not set an Inbox Limit. In your opinion, is it advantageous to set an Inbox Limit (using an Add-on) or is it okay not to?

3.) Have your users experienced any difficulties/confusions in using the conversation system? If so, what are your most frequency asked questions?

4.) Have you dealt with spam issues with conversation system and what measures have you taken to reduce it?

 

[Shelley]

I disable them on my site and just don't feel the need for it since if members need to chat they can chat via the forums or contact each other via e-mail. From my experience PC's for me usually consist of support related or general requests so I just simply disable it throughout probably more for my own benefit.

2. I think you should set a limit but that is just my opinion. I'm not a fan at all of the PC system (any PC/PM system for that matter) since I generally get bombarded with support/requests that put me off the function period.
3. Not that I am aware. I did have PC's enable early on in the life of my site so I would assume if anyone was having difficulty in some fashion they would have posted about it.
4. Yes but this was using another software so anything mentioned about that would be mute here.

 

[AndyB]

Here's my opinion:

1) The Private Conversation (PC) system is critical to the success of a forum.
2) I don't have a PC limit, but I have wrote tools to delete all PC's after a certain date.
3) The PC system in Xenforo is pretty easy to use, but I have done some template edits to remove a lot of the confusing options.
4) Never had any spam issues.

 

[DRE]

Hello,

I am planning to open private conversation rights to all members (once they post a certain number of messages on the board) and want to know how your experiences have been with the same.

1.) Do you think it's beneficial to allow Private conversations from the forum growth perspective?

2.) Should you or should you not set an Inbox Limit. In your opinion, is it advantageous to set an Inbox Limit (using an Add-on) or is it okay not to?

3.) Have your users experienced any difficulties/confusions in using the conversation system? If so, what are your most frequency asked questions?

4.) Have you dealt with spam issues with conversation system and what measures have you taken to reduce it?

1. Yeah.
2. I had PM limits on vBulletin but forgot to set them on Xenforo. I need to do that soon.
3. Most new members do not know how to start a convo. I think it's a design issue with Xenforo.
4. Very rarely, there's a report link. Spammers always get reported.

 

[MikeMpls]

1.) Do you think it's beneficial to allow Private conversations from the forum growth perspective?

Yes, it encourages more interaction between members within the forum. Anything that engages members within your forum is a good thing.

2.) Should you or should you not set an Inbox Limit. In your opinion, is it advantageous to set an Inbox Limit (using an Add-on) or is it okay not to?

Don't bother, disk space is cheap today. Most of our forums will never grow large enough that resources consumed by conversations will be significant.

3.) Have your users experienced any difficulties/confusions in using the conversation system? If so, what are your most frequency asked questions?

Claims of not receiving email notifications. I don't spend any time on it. When it works for me & I hear that it's working for others, case closed, always.

4.) Have you dealt with spam issues with conversation system and what measures have you taken to reduce it?

None.



XF's conversation system is a great improvement over the PM's many of us used in vBulletin. I wouldn't dream of disabling this fantastic feature.

 

[DRE]

I wish I could tell how much space our convos took up.

 

[0ptima]

2.) Should you or should you not set an Inbox Limit. In your opinion, is it advantageous to set an Inbox Limit (using an Add-on) or is it okay not to?

You must set limits. Your default group should be allowed to send a few (5), and once they meet a certain criteria, promote them to another group with a higher limit. This way people wont be able to register and spam other members as easily.