Autoresponder for private messages

[denise]

Title:
Autoresponder for private messages

Area:
notifications, inbox, private messaging

Summary:
Allow people to write an autoresponse text that's sent out when someone PMs them.

Description:
I don't read my private messages on this account very often at *all*, mostly because I'm subscribed to all comments on about 20 different communities and my inbox fills up rapidly -- so I just don't use it. This leads to people PMing me because they need support with Dreamwidth, or have a DW-related question, and then the message languishes in my inbox until the next time I go to clean it out. If I don't reply to a PM the minute it hits my email, I often lose it entirely (or have it eaten by running over my upper boundary of inbox items, which happens in roughly two weeks or so), and then people think I'm horrible and ignoring them and it's bad all around.

Part of this is obviously my fault for not replying to things immediately upon receiving them, but I'd really like to be able to set up an autoresponder for people who PM me, giving them my standard redirects for the best places to go and get help with DW.

Autoresponders would work like email autoresponders do: if you have autorespond enabled, when someone sends a PM, it would reply with your autorespond message (customizable). To minimize annoyances, autoresponse messages would only be sent once per contact per $timelength (I'm thinking something like "only send autoresponse once per week", so if someone PMs you every day, they'd only get the autoresponse on day 1, day 8, day 15, etc) and autoresponses would not trigger an autoresponse (so, if someone PMed you, your account autoresponded, and they had autorespond configured, you wouldn't receive their autoresponse).

Poll #3979 Autoresponder for private messages

Open to: Registered Users, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 54

View Respondents

This suggestion:

View Answers

Should be implemented as-is.
33 (61.1%)

Should be implemented with changes. (please comment)
14 (25.9%)

Shouldn't be implemented.
2 (3.7%)

(I have no opinion)
5 (9.3%)

(Other: please comment)
0 (0.0%)

Comments

[pseudomonas]

This doesn't sound like a bad idea, but if someone's PMing you, why not just have it so that the autoresponse is shown to them on the send-a-pm screen? This could be done before they've written the message, so if the "autoresponse" is "If you want to get hold of me urgently you'll have to phone" they might be saved the trouble of typing the message in the first place.

[matgb]

I like this plan.

[aveleh]

Ooh, I like that too.

[sophie]

This is my "implemented with changes" too!

[alexseanchai]

This

[kyrielle]

+1

[pauamma]

:nths the motion.

[jazzfish]

Seems reasonable. +1

[archangelbeth]

Oh, clever! I like this.

[syderia]

+1

[ex_pseudonym472]

Ooo I'm changing my vote to with changes, I like this better.

[briarwood]

+1

Fab idea!

[azurelunatic]

I like this.

I presume it would not be shown to people who are not allowed to send you a message? Or perhaps should it be different for people who are not allowed to send you a message?

[aedifica]

I'd be happy to see this or the original suggestion.

[exor674]

+1

[green_knight]

Alternatively, can we turn delivering comments to one's inbox a choice? I want comments to be sent to my e-mail address, and put up with them in my inbox because there's no way to switch that off - but why must we have it there? Why can't we just decide to either get them e-mailed or to our inbox or both or neither?

[denise]

We have a bug open for that already, as part of pulling in the code for LJ's latest notification system, but we've been holding off on that because there were some issues with the changes and we're going to have to merge each small bit by hand, which takes a very long time.

[pauamma]

There's actually a series of patches that do that (among other things) for LiveJournal and that we're planning to integrate at some point, but it's a lot of work and will probably happen piecemeal.