Admin Private Messages Manager

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murnauvsbuñuel
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Admin Private Messages Manager

Post by murnauvsbuñuel »

could add to phpBB 3.0 Olympus a "admin private messages manager"

An Admin panel plug-in that allows the management of Private Messages on the board. Where the admin may sort by a variety of options, delete any PMs you choose, or optionally archive them for later use.

i have found this similar mod to phpBB 2.0.x http://www.nivisec.com/phpbb.php?l=p and could be very useful to phpBB 3.0

what is your opinion? thanks
sorry for my bad english i am spanish.
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Nicholas the Italian
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Re: Admin Private Messages Manager

Post by Nicholas the Italian »

1) Feature request. Might be a MOD.
2) What are you talking about?? Managing your own PMs (you can do this via UCP) or everybody's PMs? In this latter case, I'd remind you that Private Messages, as surprising as it may seem, are private; you shouldn't even be able to see them, let alone manage/delete them.
Someone will probably make a MOD for this, but IMO, this is a no-no-what-the-hell-are-you-doing (except very particoular cases, where PMs are not PMs and users are explicitly told that they're not).

PS: for security checks, you can just take a look at the database tables, or write a script that retrieves this data for you.

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Freelance
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Re: Admin Private Messages Manager

Post by Freelance »

I don't think this will ever be a standard feature in phpBB.
As nicholas said private messages should remain private unless the users are aware that they can be viewed by the admin.
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murnauvsbuñuel
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Re: Admin Private Messages Manager

Post by murnauvsbuñuel »

Nicholas the Italian wrote: 1) Feature request. Might be a MOD.
2) What are you talking about?? Managing your own PMs (you can do this via UCP) or everybody's PMs?

i would say manage everybody´s PMs, i think this important to control of insults and illegal PMs

i think that is good remove the PMs in the sent box because are just copies of the exact same message that was sent, except assigned to the sender after the other user has read the PM. These are not needed really
and remove the PMs of banner users
sorry for my bad english i am spanish.
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Handyman
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Re: Admin Private Messages Manager

Post by Handyman »

murnauvsbuñuel wrote:
Nicholas the Italian wrote: 1) Feature request. Might be a MOD.
2) What are you talking about?? Managing your own PMs (you can do this via UCP) or everybody's PMs?

i would say manage everybody´s PMs, i think this important to control of insults and illegal PMs

i think that is good remove the PMs in the sent box because are just copies of the exact same message that was sent, except assigned to the sender after the other user has read the PM. These are not needed really
and remove the PMs of banner users

If there are issues, your members can forward the PM to you if you need to see it… other than that, the Private Messages are supposed to be [shock] Private [/shock]

If there is an insult, as long as you have good members, you will receive a PM saying: "Hey, I've just been insulted, would you please perma ban this dude"
Same thing with illegal PMs.
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Highway of Life
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Re: Admin Private Messages Manager

Post by Highway of Life »

murnauvsbuñuel wrote: i would say manage everybody´s PMs, i think this important to control of insults and illegal PMs
Bad Idea.

That is something that should never be implemented or MODed into phpBB (or any other board software, for that matter).
  1. If private messages were be meant to be seen by the Admin, they would not be called private.
  2. If you want such a feature, there is going to be a MOD where users can post in a specific forum, and only the author and Admin or Moderators can read the content in that forum.
That is it... private messages HAVE to remain private...

If the Admin really MUST read a PM... they can look in the database.
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murnauvsbuñuel
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Re: Admin Private Messages Manager

Post by murnauvsbuñuel »

Highway of Life wrote:
  1. If you want such a feature, there is going to be a MOD where users can post in a specific forum, and only the author and Admin or Moderators can read the content in that forum.

that is fine, thanks
sorry for my bad english i am spanish.
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Nicholas the Italian
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Re: Admin Private Messages Manager

Post by Nicholas the Italian »

murnauvsbuñuel wrote: i would say manage everybody´s PMs, i think this important to control of insults and illegal PMs

What you're asking is by all means simply illegal in many coutries, and at least highy disputable in the rest of the world. So I see no way it may be implemented in phpbb by default. (I also find it difficult this will be accepted as official mod by phpbb mod staff. Of course you might find this as unofficial mod somewhere.)
Developers may go all the way through and just crypt PMs as they crypt passwords. But it was discussed not long ago the need, sometimes, to get access to this kind of data, for security reasons.
Therefore I support the choice to keep messages "as is" in the tables, so that they can still be retrieved by admins, if they feel this is necessary, with a raw access to the database. Many people may find deprecable that thousands of admins may read or use this data in any way they're willing; I guess it's the price "we" have to pay to retain a certain degree of control over our boards and its users' behavior and safety. On the other hand, I won't surely welcome any easy-ready-for-everyone method for giving out this private data.
i think that is good remove the PMs in the sent box because are just copies of the exact same message that was sent, except assigned to the sender after the other user has read the PM. These are not needed really and remove the PMs of banner users

The first one is a feature you offer to your users; if you don't want to, just lower folder limits in the ACP.
For the second one, I guess this kind of feature might be requested for 3.2, but it's not really needed either.
Accessing the database and a SQL command would do everything you're asking for. These honestly are non-issues.

PS: topic review eh? ;) yeah, highway pointed the matter as well.
PPS: just to clarify, murnauvsbuñuel, nothing against you and if you need to create a structure of this kind there'll surely be a way; but then you're talking about a completely different thing than PMs.

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Re: Admin Private Messages Manager

Post by SamG »

Sam steps up on one of his many soapboxes, and says…

I am more than ever convinced that PM systems need to be either renamed or removed from forum products. I very seriously doubt that the word "private" in phpBB's PM system was meant to imply all the legal and moral responsibility suggested in topics like this. It's much more likely, in my opinion, that "private messages" are simply non-public messages, messages between members, not intended for public view to be sure but certainly not private in some absolute moral and/or legal sense. It's a member-to-member communication system that is in no way a core feature or concept in a public forum product. It's a convenience to keep public interaction within a community truly public by providing a non-public vehicle for non-public interaction among members or between members and staff.

Nobody calls a lawyer when the content of a "private" message is divulged, publicly or privately, without permission. The content of a private message simply doesn't enjoy that kind of status and protection. PM as a term, as I see it, is a convention, and not some sort of legal contract. It's very different for personal information as defined by law. Post my contact information without my permission and you've got a legal problem. Post the content of a PM I sent you and you might not even have a moral problem. "Sam PMed me with an idea for the forum (see quote below) and I thought it might be worth discussing within the community."

It's possible to be sensitive to the motivation behind posts via PM without going so far as to suggest that the word "private" in PM was declared by an act of Parliament. It simply wasn't. It's not a core service of a public forum, it's not a separate service of a public forum, so whatever it is, it serves the purposes of a public forum and nothing else, including any personal desire for privacy I may have while in a public place. If I want or expect privacy, I need to go somewhere other than a public forum.

Sam steps off the soapbox and waits for the moral outrage to commence… :D
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Highway of Life
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Re: Admin Private Messages Manager

Post by Highway of Life »

Although I totally agree with you Sam, it still does not mean the admin should be readily allowed to view PMs of members (unless necessary) and I believe such action should be discouraged.
I know of no such law which forbids digging into PMs on the server... but that doesn't mean we go allowing people to view PMs.

I had one of our members request a MOD that would track every single thing a member did, where he went, what he was looking at, how long he was looking at it, reading what he was reading, including PMs... etc...
But of course I refused, that's just too much, I'm not sure how I would feel about someone being able to see that much information about what I'm reading... I don't see a need for it, however, perhaps I'm not a member of boards where PMs are abused, so maybe this is why I don't see the need, but the database is there readily available for an Admin to read the PMs if needed (I have once, and it was just not that difficult), so I don't know what the issue is... it's not like it's impossible for the Admin to go look...
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