Lack of interest [Suggestion] Limit Profile Conversations

[Vilandra]

I couldn't find anything to say if there WAS a limit already, so if there is, my apologies.

But on my larger site I have had to disable what they call "visitor messages" in part because there was no way to limit them and people were using them like private messages. I'd like to suggest an (optional) way to limit the number of conversations that can be kept on the profile, similar to the way private message numbers are limited per usergroup.

Just my 11 cents.

 

[Wired]

Good idea. I'm hoping there's ways to enable / disable / limit VMs as well, as profile spammers are using it more and more.

 

[Vilandra]

I just think it's a little problematic to have an unlimited space for content that's not easily moderated.

 

[Brandon_R]

Instead of limiting it, i think we should make it more easily moderated.

The social networking philosophy

The user does the moderating and the moderators performs the actions.

 

[Vilandra]

That doesn't solve the problem, though, of people using them like private conversations and having hundreds and hundreds of pages of them taking up server space Obviously the limit could be optional

 

[Fufu]

YES! PLEASE! I WANT THIS FEATURE SO BAD since VMs where introduced!

VMs take a ton of room, I would like to prune them or limit them in some way.

Admin settable 'X' (or '-1' unlimited) most recent VMs per user for each usergroup... YES!

我爱你~!! (I love you) Vilandra! good suggestion!

 

[ChrisR]

I really like this idea as well.

 

[Erik]

Good idea. But what happens when the user reaches the limit? You can't delete old messages without their permission, but you don't want to punish the person who's posting by not allowing them to leave a message... It's a tough decision. I think you would have to warn the user before their profile get's full and let them know they have to delete some messages if they wish to receive more.

 

[Vilandra]

Well, you would have to have similar functionality to a private message box - something at the bottom that says x total messages and then make it known on your forum that the limit is 100 or whatever it is.

 

[Wired]

I guess it depends on how you view VMs. On the forums I admin / moderate, most of them are spam, and by posters with zero to five posts. We removed the ability for people with less than 5 posts to be able to post VMs, problem solved.

Vilandra, would that be a limit on how many you can post, or how many you can have on your profile?

 

[Vilandra]

I just ran into the situation where the VM's weren't being used for their intended purpose, by regular members. So that wouldn't work for me.

 

[Wired]

Agreed. Occasionally I see people asking one particular admin highly technical questions via VM, but they don't PM him or ever post in the forum.

 

[Floris]

Personally I am against limiting users much. It's a social profile, and instead of them having the conversations on Skype/MSN/aim, etc, they have them on the site. They're return traffic, and they feel part of a community and participate more in the forums. Cliques will always happen, and it's the task of the moderators to steer a community into a positive. This includes moderating not just the threads, but also the profiles, album conversations, blog comments, etc. Limiting this too much I feel is locking down your community, which only leads to closer groups, and pushed further away from the positive feeling. Every little thing will end up as drama.

 

[Fufu]

Personally I am against limiting users much. It's a social profile, and instead of them having the conversations on Skype/MSN/aim, etc, they have them on the site. They're return traffic, and they feel part of a community and participate more in the forums. Cliques will always happen, and it's the task of the moderators to steer a community into a positive. This includes moderating not just the threads, but also the profiles, album conversations, blog comments, etc. Limiting this too much I feel is locking down your community, which only leads to closer groups, and pushed further away from the positive feeling. Every little thing will end up as drama.

Most of us are hobbyst that cannot afford a 'X'GB database, Floris.

 

[Floris]

Most of us are hobbyst that cannot afford a 'X'GB database, Floris.

I don't limit my users too much and we're nearing 750,000 posts and use 350mb .sql
You don't need gigabytes to allow users to post to social profiles, .. anyway.

you can already limit who's viewing via privacy settings, users can determine this themselves.
I think this kinda implies that it's also a global permission that an admin can set for everybody (for a usergroup).

 

[Forsaken]

Personally I am against limiting users much. It's a social profile, and instead of them having the conversations on Skype/MSN/aim, etc, they have them on the site. They're return traffic, and they feel part of a community and participate more in the forums. Cliques will always happen, and it's the task of the moderators to steer a community into a positive. This includes moderating not just the threads, but also the profiles, album conversations, blog comments, etc. Limiting this too much I feel is locking down your community, which only leads to closer groups, and pushed further away from the positive feeling. Every little thing will end up as drama.

Thats my feeling on it.

I always make my 'limits' something about 5+ digits if theres no unlimited option, just because I see no reason to limit my users.

If they're active enough, and actually meet a lower limit (Say 50-100), they'll just get frustrated, and complain, so its better to give them as close to unlimited as I can.

 

[Floris]

It's a difficult situation though. I understand (Especially for hobby users) that a big busy forum needs to cut corners, and that means disabling social profiles and other features. However, I see these sites adding arcade and other things that cause 50 to 500x the traffic.

The more you try to be in control of the content, the more the users will abuse that what is in front of them. Allow the freedom, and reward them for returning to the site, and participating, and you'll have a great community. Willing to pay and donate to support it.

 

[Onimua]

Most of us are hobbyst that cannot afford a 'X'GB database, Floris.

Text isn't usually the thing that adds size to a database, it's the attachments, avatars, and other media directly stored on your database that adds up quickly. If you're worried about database sizes, it's these things you need to limit/control. So Profile Conversations aren't likely to be the thing to make you hit your limits any time soon.

 

[Brandon_R]

Correct, if you don't store any attachments in the database nor avatars etc then the database will only reach X GB's with massive activity.

 

[Vilandra]

...it's the task of the moderators to steer a community into a positive. This includes moderating not just the threads, but also the profiles, album conversations, blog comments, etc.

lol my staff has better things to do than read 100s of pages of visitor messages per person of conversations that should be done via pm.

It's great that you haven't had problems with it, but I have. So I need a way to steer people towards using visitor messages for their intended purpose, and to take the private conversations to private conversations.