[RFC] Usability: Always allow user to respond to PM

[igorw]

If a user receives a PM but does not have permissions to respond (for example: he just signed up) this is kind of bad. The person sending him the message implicitly gave him permission to reply. It might make sense to always allow him to do so.

How can I stop getting PMs from that annoying guy?

1. Report him to have him banned
2. Add him to your foes list, this should disallow PMs from that person (it does currently not)

Thoughts?

[naim]

Let forum Administrator choose between the two:

• Grant user to respond only to that sender
• Notify sender that the user won't be able to respond via PM and suggest to send sender's email address.

[naderman]

Let forum Administrator choose between the two:

• Grant user to respond only to that sender
• Notify sender that the user won't be able to respond via PM and suggest to send sender's email address.

I think that's just another configuration option which 99.99% of administrators will leave at its default value. So I agree with Igor's proposal. Let's just always allow users to respond.

[imkingdavid]

So basically the only change needed is to remove the permission check when replying?

Also, the OP suggested disallowing people to send messages if they are on the recipient's foes list. Should that be a separate RFC?

EDIT: Ticket here

[Oleg]

How about adding a permission to reply to PMs instead of altering existing logic? I think this will be clearer and will take care of abuse in one go.

So we achieve this by removing the permission check when replying. Of course thinking about it now, users can still abuse this if they are originally allowed to send messages and then lose their permission but because of this change may still reply to existing messages. Perhaps a new permission will be necessary (e.g. u_noreply) to make sure users cannot reply to any private messages?

[Oleg]

Also, the OP suggested disallowing people to send messages if they are on the recipient's foes list. Should that be a separate RFC?

Yes and I'm not sure I like the idea of revealing a user's foe list to their foes. Maybe just bitbucket the message, or make it invisible to the recipient and add a cron job to clean up these messages after some time (this way if the recipient un-foes the sender the recipient will be able to read the message).

[imkingdavid]

How about adding a permission to reply to PMs instead of altering existing logic? I think this will be clearer and will take care of abuse in one go.

That's probably a better solution than all the hack-ish code I wrote up. But there would have to still be some added logic that ensures that the users can only reply to the original sender and no one else. And we could even go one step further and only allow one reply per PM, but I haven't looked into what is currently in place to facilitate that.

[Oleg]

And we could even go one step further and only allow one reply per PM, but I haven't looked into what is currently in place to facilitate that.

I don't think we need or want this.

[imkingdavid]

And we could even go one step further and only allow one reply per PM, but I haven't looked into what is currently in place to facilitate that.

I don't think we need or want this.

That would simply be to reduce the chance of abuse, but I suppose it isn't that big of an issue.

[A_Jelly_Doughnut]

A related issue (that might be more of a bug than related to this RFC): It is possible to send a PM to a user who is not permitted to use PMs at all (i.e. he cannot even read the PM).

In general, the PM permissions list is probably a little (err, a lot) too granular. (Can delete private messages? WTF?)