Allow a comment to an entry to be sent as a PM

[ivorygates]

Title:
Allow a comment to an entry to be sent as a PM

Area:
entries

Summary:
If we had the option to reply to comments in our own journals in the form of a PM to the person who commented as well as in the form of a comment, it would be cool.

Description:
This is not a problem-solving suggestion. But there are times that you want to respond to a comment privately, either to provide sensitive information or just to tell the person to STFU without embarassing them. Or even to provide sekrit information that the other people reading your journal can't see. And it's a PITA to have to hunt your way over to their journal and construct a PM when you could just have one-touch shopping.

And if doing that didn't unscreen their comment -- if you happen to have all comments screened -- that would be even more awesome! It would be a way to reply to unscreened comments without opening the thread of discourse for general view.

Poll #709

Open to: Registered Users, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 39

View Respondents

This suggestion:

View Answers

Should be implemented as-is.
15 (38.5%)

Should be implemented with changes.
3 (7.7%)

Shouldn't be implemented.
17 (43.6%)

(Other: please comment)
4 (10.3%)

Comments

[denise]

Are you thinking that the PM link should be in the comment email, somewhere in the header bar of the comments by all of the action icons, or in the (Reply to this) link list at the end of the comment?

(I like the idea, just curious as to where you think it should go.)

[ivorygates]

the way i envision it is that you'd hit "reply" in the ordinary way, and then [just as you have the option to crosspost when you're making an entry] it would say something like: "send as private message to [username]?" and you'd either say YES or NO. And maybe you could get a success notification in your own Inbox, like you do with crosspostings.

[also maybe a PM Comment would be in a different type color or something to indicate to you that it's going as a PM Comment, so you have a last chance to Abort before hitting Send]

[jackalibis]

Instead of adding it directly for the comments, maybe add the PM link into the list whenever you hover over the info button of any user in the comments.

There could be a new option list under the View list. It could link up like:

Send: Private Comment | Private Message

Private Comment would provide link-back information to the original post and any threaded comment it might have been in reply to, while the PM link is just standard messages.

[rebelsheart]

How would this work for people who block PMs from others?

[cleverthylacine]

I don't think it would change anything, if I understand it; it's just to make it easier to PM.

[(Anonymous)]

But if you have the context hover menu thing enabled, you can just hover over the little userhead icon next to the username and get an option to "send message". So it's not like you actually HAVE to go to their journal to send a PM, and I don't see how that's any harder than clicking an option on the comment reply form, really. If you really prefer to send comment replies as PMs, why not do that rather than clog up the reply form with more options?

Also, I would like to be able not to receive comment replies in this way, so should it be implemented there should be an opt-out for users to choose not to accept such PMs. If I comment to your post rather than PM you, I would like a comment not a PM in reply.

- C

[softestbullet]

But if you have the context hover menu thing enabled, you can just hover over the little userhead icon next to the username and get an option to "send message". So it's not like you actually HAVE to go to their journal to send a PM, and I don't see how that's any harder than clicking an option on the comment reply form, really.

Yes, this is what I thought.

[cleverthylacine]

A lot of people do not have that menu enabled because it's startling and annoying to have popups on your screen every time your mouse accidentally hits a usericon or when you're trying to see something near it. I turn it off in every journal because I find it annoying as all getout.

[ivorygates]

If I comment to your post rather than PM you, I would like a comment not a PM in reply.

I hear that, but there are times when the journal owner will not think this is the best option, or it will not be what she wants to do.

She already has the option to (1) copy your comment-text to Clipboard (2) grab your PM, IM, or email info (3) paste the text into the PM, IM, or email and write a reply. This would just streamline that process.

Supporting this.

[charmian]

I think in the case of a user not being allowed to PM the other person, the link to PM the other person should be greyed out.

Re: Supporting this.

[ivorygates]

Not that it's my call, but I think that would work well. Or when you choose PM and you can't PM, you could just get an annoying pop-up msg.... ;)

[zarhooie]

There's a fairly good workaround to this that's already in place. If you hover over the userhead of any user who allows random PMs, there's an option to send them a message. I use this *all the time* and it works fairly well.

ETA: I should finish my sentences before TAB+enter-ing!
ETAETA: I should also read previous comments before commenting. :-x

[mordyn4]

Oh yeah, the hover menus..... I disabled them so I forgot about them. Hrm. Otherwise I thought this was a cool idea.

[ivorygates]

Hm. True. But I envision the PM as including the text of the comment being replied to, so that's a little different from the PM function you describe.

I voted "no" because ...

[susanreads]

As rebelsheart said, some people block PMs. They might also have rules in their profile as to when they think PMing is acceptable.

Something I would prefer to see that serves a similar privacy function, which I'm sure was mentioned somewhere on the post with 800 comments, is to be able to post a comment screened, so that only you, the owner of the journal you're posting in, and the person you're directly replying to can see it. That preserves the thread structure, including who commented first, and if the host can reply without unscreening (has that been done yet?) they could say publicly "the invite code has been claimed" or "close, but no banana" if it's a quiz, say.

I think this is better

[cleverthylacine]

I see no reason not to allow PMs from a comment thread as long as the person has PMs enabled (if you only want PMs when you think it's acceptable--which I get--I'd limit it to your trusted list because they can be expected to know that) but I like this suggestion better.

Re: I voted "no" because ...

[melannen]

I agree. I'd really like to be able to do this. (Especially speaking as a moderator; sometimes you have to talk to people who have no e-mail or pm, and it would be nice to easily do that privately.) I also like the idea below calling it a "private comment" and distinguishing it from screened comments.

It probably has a great deal of drama potential, though.

This is better

[wenchpixie]

Yes, this, as the journal owner, or possibly comm owner/op (depending on comm rules, ideally, but I suspect it may overcomplicate the coding)it would be very useful to reply without unscreening and with a pre-screened comment.

That would get over the issue of anyone tracking a post getting notifications of comments they weren't supposed to see.

[mark]

I've seen this behavior on other sites before. Are you trying to have the ability to send a "private comment" to a person? (I.e., are you wanting to send a PM for a PM's sake, or do you just want to have a private comment thread with someone?)

[ivorygates]

I'm seeing this as a way to make a response to a posted comment privately, and only available to you in your own journal [ie, you can't PM someone when you're responding to a comment in someone else's journal or in a community.]

[cleverthylacine]

Sounds fine to me but a lot of people don't have PMs enabled, or only have them enabled to their trusted list because PMs have been used as a form of harassment.

[rainbow]

I really like the idea of having a Private Comment (PC?) option in the form of a comment, instead of regular PM.

Would a PC show to the commenter, commenter they're responding to, and/or journal owner, but not to anyone else? Or only the commenter and who they're commenting to? Or would it not show at all on the entry?

And if someone has PMs turned off, would it still go to them as a "Private Comment" or would it be blocked by the PM blocking?

[cleverthylacine]

If someone is blocking PMs I don't think that we should be enabling people to work around that. People who block PMs, or who block them from non-trusted users, often do so because they have been harassed by people who feel free to be much more vicious if they know that nobody else can see what they're saying.

[lone_lilly]

I like this, but I still desperately want the ability to choose to leave a screened comment to a post that isn't automatically screening comments. PMs are fine if enabled, but there have been times when I wanted to relate a personal story privately but the original poster had PMs disabled and no email address available. If I could have simply screened my own comment it would have made things so much easier!

[ciaan]

Yes, screening own comments is something I absolutely would like to see. The other problem is that when you leave a comment and then the journal owner replies but screens their comment, you can no longer read it or easily reply to it. So being able to see screened comments that were replies to you would be useful.

And it would be nice to be able to easily send a PM from the comment page when you have the contextual hover menu turned off, because I hate that pop-up and never want to see it.

[zvi]

I think we should discourage the user behavior of using replies to journal entries (always comments up to now) to exchange information users don't want anyone other than the journal owner to see, because the display or screening of comments is at the discretion of the OP/community moderators.

I do not think we should give users posting in someone else's journal the ability to screen or unscreen comments; I think it unnecessarily introduces further ambiguity into the question of who controls the discussion in an individual's journal.

If we want to introduce a link that says "send private message", I think it should not be pre-filled with any information from the originating entry or comment thread.

[ivorygates]

I disagree. I don't think it's reasonable to attempt to mandate how people will use the site or what form of dialogue they will engage in.

This is not about the display or screening of comments, AFAIK, but about easily allowing the journal owner to speak privately to someone who has responded to her post.

[denise]

The poll attached to this entry indicates that right now, there isn't sufficient support for this idea. At this time, it won't be migrated to Bugzilla. If you'd like to re-suggest it in six months to see if opinions change, please feel free!