Allow adding (or replying) initial/default recipient when replying to a PM

[pauamma]

Title:
Allow adding (or replying) initial/default recipient when replying to a PM

Area:
inbox, private messages

Summary:
When replying to a Dreamwidth PM sent to you, allow adding recipients to the initial recipient (sender of the message you're replying to), or even replacing that recipient with an arbitrary list, for a quick and dirty forward,

Description:
This wouldn't breach privacy that I can see (who the original message went to), because the only initial recipient of the reply would be the sender, as it already is, and no other recipient of the original message would be offered as a suggestion or listed. (Indeed, that would be impossible, as the list of original recipients isn't kept anywhere. One message sent to several users looks the same as several identical messages sent very close.)

Poll #5205 Allow adding (or replying) initial/default recipient when replying to a PM

Open to: Registered Users, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 49

View Respondents

This suggestion:

View Answers

Should be implemented as-is.
13 (26.5%)

Should be implemented with changes. (please comment)
0 (0.0%)

Shouldn't be implemented.
15 (30.6%)

(I have no opinion)
19 (38.8%)

(Other: please comment)
2 (4.1%)

Comments

[marahmarie]

I'll change my vote to a "yes" if you can give me the Cliff notes version of this and from there, I decide that I can respect that this does not violate privacy - I'm just not getting it, the way it's written. In other words, say my friend Sophie PMs me. I reply, and when I do, for some reason I can send my reply to 20 other people? And the reply includes her original message? How does this not violate Sophie's privacy? I'm trying hard to get this, but so far, I don't.

[pauamma]

The scenario you described is already possible now, if you're worried about deliberate breaches of privacy. If your concern is about accidental breaches of privacy, there are ways to make that harder, eg by having a checkbox that enables the extra recipients.

The breach of privacy I was thinking of was more along the lines of you learning (and maybe passing on to others) that in addition to you, Sophie sent her message to Alice and Carol. That information isn't available to you now, and the change wouldn't make it possible.

[marahmarie]

Oh, great. So, right now it's possible to send my reply to Sophie to 20 other people, with her original message included? I had no idea. This will swear me off PMs forever, though, if it's true.

And I'm still awaiting the Cliff notes - so far all you've done is confirm my worst fears, but you have not explained your suggestion in a way I can begin to understand (no matter how many times I re-read your OP - four times since last night, to be precise - still, I am not getting it).

And considering you're up to 10 votes for "do not implement" as of this moment, I may be onto something in mentioning that.

[matgb]

I just tested, and it is currently possible to send a PM to multiple people using commas, but not possible to add extra people into a reply.

I, personally, never use PMs to send, and rarely even reply to people on there, I'll go find an email address out of preference.

Ergo, I voted 'no opinion' as it's not something I even think adds to site functionality. Then, I've always had a publicly listed googleable email address and I know I'm unusual that way.

But I'm fairly sure that the discussion seems to be split between people that view PMs as a sort of on site email system, and people that view them as something copmpletely diffrent from email that should be different.

I'm not sure that those two desires are going to be easy to reconcile.

So, help me out, why and how do you think PMs are, and should be, different to email?

[marahmarie]

I'll tell you what a private message should not be, just to shorten this: it is not (or should not be) forwardable. It is not (or should not be) disseminated through blind copies. It does not (or should not) involve more than two people - the original sender and the original recipient.

If you, Matt, send the same PM to five people, then it is not a private message. It is just a message. There's nothing private about it at all.

Likewise...

If I receive a message from Sophie and copy my answer, along with her original message, to her and five others, then it is not a private reply. It's just a reply. And her private message is no longer private, either.

If what I've described above is not how private messaging works - nor how it should work, in most people's opinions- then I want the name of it changed to "on-board email", "the mailing lists", "on-site email" or whatever phrase best connotes no expectation of privacy at all.

I absolutely hate misnomers, especially ones that are as misleading as "private message" is turning out to be - at least judging by this thread.

[sophie]

I'll tell you what a private message should not be, just to shorten this: it is not (or should not be) forwardable.

For the record, the scenario that the parent commenters are describing (which is already possible) is to copy the message into the clipboard, paste it into a new message, and use the 'multiple recipients' feature of specifying multiple names separated with comments to send that message to others. Since the message system doesn't distinguish between 'replies' and 'new messages', it's basically the same thing. From a purely technical standpoint, adding this feature wouldn't make any difference.

In other words, for a message to 'not be forwardable', the Dreamwidth code would need to check the contents of the message to make sure that the message you're sending doesn't contain content from any message you've received previously. Obviously, that's not going to happen, because it would be an artificially silly restriction.

Now, from a social standpoint (disregarding the fact that anybody who really wants to can just send a new message anyway), I can see where you're coming from about not having a forward option. Not having that option would mean that the other person would have needed to specifically use a new message, which will at least mean that they would have had to think more about whether that's a good action.

In the end, I'm against this suggestion, but not for that reason; I'm against it because I think that PMing isn't really supposed to be a replacement for email. There are better tools available for the job.

[matgb]

OK, that makes sense and I sort of agree with you. If they're called private, then many people will assume a degree of privacy from them, which would I suspect include not sending blind copies to others and similar.

But I've never thought of them as private messages, merely on site messages. So I'll talk it through with Denise when I get a chance, and consider rewording the relevent FAQs to remove the term private.

The feature itself doesn't use the term private messages anywhere I can see, it's just documentation that does. I've found two, How do I send people messages on Dreamwidth? and How do I protect my privacy on Dreamwidth? (Part 2), that's from a cursory search, I'll do a more thorough scan when I've time, if you see any more let me know.

Not perhhaps a long term fixx, but there's going to need to be a discussion about what people want the site to offer in terms of features like messages, so we either call them PMs and keep them private, or we call them something else and don't give people false expectations, and move them towards a different functionality.

Definitely can't call them email though, they're not email, they don't follow email protocols.

[yvi]

Hmm, your definition of not breaching privacy in this suggestion seems to be "it won't look like it came from another person and will not include who the original message went to other than you". Which I doubt is the same deginition as many people here are using.

[pauamma]

That's not my definition of "not breaching privacy". That's my definition of "breaches of privacy that aren't already possible, but that this change might (appear to) make possible".

[yvi]

Well, you wrote "This wouldn't breach privacy that I can see", with the addendum "(who the original message went to)", which is not what I think most people mean when they think about privacy as related to personal messages. My first thought certainly wasn't "people shouldn't see who the original message went to", as I already know that even the original recipient never sees that.

[marahmarie]

"My first thought certainly wasn't "people shouldn't see who the original message went to", as I already know that even the original recipient never sees that."

So the idea is to copy the original message you receive and your reply to it to others, without anyone seeing who the original recipient was? Is this already possible, or is this what the OP wants to implement? I am totally and completely lost.

[ninetydegrees]

Privacy issues aside, I think I'd rather have a forward button. It would be simpler and clearer to me.

[pauamma]

What would that button do? Forward unaltered with just an indication of the original sender and date sent? Forward with your own text added to the unaltered message sender and text? Forward with the options of making edits to the original text?

[ninetydegrees]

"Forward unaltered with just an indication of the original sender and date sent." I think.

Also, to me, the multi-recipient feature is another idea entirely (which I think I would be for if the number of recipients was limited and the number of times you can sent PMs to X people was limited as well; maybe even just a paid feature).

[pauamma]

Well, I would expect the same limits for multi-recipient reply or forward as the ones already applicable for multi-recipient initial send. (Whatever those are.) I don't see an obvious need for more restrictive limits. Do you?

[noracharles]

I did not know we already could PM more than one user at a time. Thank you!

[ninetydegrees]

Like Nora, I didn't know you could already send the same PM to several people. How do you do that BTW? Use commas?

[yvi]

Yep, use commas. I had to ask in IRC for that, it's not really obvious that it can be done.

[ninetydegrees]

Ok, thanks.
Yeah, I didn't see it mentioned in the FAQs.

[pauamma]

Yeah. Worth a clarification in the UI and FAQ, I think.

[pauamma]

Yes, commas between usernames. (And I thought everyone knew this, but now that I checked, I see it's not mentioned in the compose form or in FAQ 68. Want to suggest a clarification?)

[ninetydegrees]

Want to suggest a clarification?

Definitely but it's unclear to me where one should do that, these days. Comment on dw_docs? File a bug for Project Documentation? So most of the time, I don't say anything because I don't know where it should go (and also it doesn't seem that the stuff we were encouraged to mention in dw_docs are being read by anybody).

[pauamma]

Probably file a bug, since you have a Zilla account. (If you didn't, a suggestion would probably work.)

I don't know what the dw_docs status is now. I'm not actively involved in doc wrangling.

[matgb]

File a bug. And when my life isn't a complete mess, I'll figure out how to get things organised properly.

Theoretically, I'm taking over Docs, but at no point since I agreed to do it have we had a week without some sort of crisis and my brain isn't catching up.

[ninetydegrees]

Ok, done. Thanks.

[noracharles]

+1 to the multi-recipient feature.

I often send PMs to multiple people, and it would be nice not to have to send them one recipient at a time.

I don't see a need for a forwarding button. It's easy to copy a message and send it on; having a button would just be needless clutter, plus it would seem to encourage forwarding, something I think is against Private Message culture.

PMs aren't email, and I don't want them to be like email.

[ninetydegrees]

I think it could be useful for community admins (but there are plans to make the Inbox work for communities so it may make the point moot).

[noracharles]

Oh yes, I see what you mean.

[marahmarie]

Don't "forward buttons" change it from a "private messaging" system into an on-board email system? I'm not getting the point of this, at all, except to do precisely what the OP suggests won't be done - violate everyone's privacy.

[ninetydegrees]

I don't see any difference between PMs and e-mails to be honest. PMs are just more convenient for me most of the time.

[azurelunatic]

I also see little difference between PMs and e-mails, although when I have someone's known preferred address already, e-mail is usually more convenient for me. Thus I am in favor of making the PM system more e-mail-like.

[cesy]

I'm slightly hesitant about this - although it is possible to copy-paste a PM sent to you and send it to someone else, it's not encouraged by the system. Your proposed changes would make PMs seem less private and more like emails. So I think it is slightly more open, but I think it's also a good thing to make PMs more like emails.

[marahmarie]

I'm sorry, but I'd vote this suggestion down a billion times if I could. It's got me so squeamish about the existing functionality of PMs (which I was not even aware of until this post) that I don't even know where to start.

*stomach's turning*