I've been thinking about the fact that there's a limit on the size that our PM inboxes can be. This is unfortunately inevitable, as we don't have an infinite amount of storage space available to us. I had the idea that if the notification emails that we get on new PM's contained the messages that were PM'd, then as long as you didn't delete those emails you'd have a copy of all of your private messages, even after the board deletes them. So I went through the process this morning of overhauling the PM notification system to include the bodies of the messages in the notification emails.

It's not perfect. BBCode and smilies get translated weirdly in the emails, which is something I can work on fixing. One large issue that I hadn't thought of was brought to my attention: What happens to PM's that are edited or deleted before the member reads them? Unfortunately, the original message would be sent to the recipient via email, and they wouldn't see the edits until they visited SB. This is a downside, because often it makes sense to edit your message before someone has seen it: What if you want to change your offer on a trade or sale? What if you said something that you changed your mind about?

So what do you guys think? Keep the PM's the way they are, without including the messages? Or include the messages, and get rid of PM editing or deleting? Something else entirely?

I dont use the email system, but I can appreciate the idea of saving messages. I definitely would not like to use the editing option though. For myself, I use this feature all the time, and for innumerable reasons. One major factor though is, for those of us who are PM buddies and spamming each other all day [and night] long....you know who you are...it allows me to append more stuff to the message, which saves me from having to write several PMs, thus not cloggin up the inbox too. and the retraction/revision is certainly a nice thing to have.

I don't bother with email notifications for PM's. I'm here daily so I see them when I arrive. Lets keep it the same. If its an important PM I just remember to drop it in my saved messages folder.

I like the idea of an extra folder in the PM box for hanging on to important messages. It would be nice to be able to easily shift relevant messages regarding purchases or sales made, or to be certain that that one post with all those links doesn't get automatically eaten up by the aether. It can definitely be a pain to search through pages and pages of old SB mail to find that one thing!

^^ This. Some type of folder system would be sweet, even if the total allotment is the same.

Yeah, definitely don't take away the option to edit posts. Its absence could cause mass chaos and even more bickering

^ Oh it wouldn't be removing the option to edit posts, it would only remove the option to edit sent private messages before they're read. But it's looking like that wouldn't make sense anyway.

Can you add a feature that automatically deletes PM's from ass-hats, social-retards, guys trying to pick a fight over toys, flakey buyers and guys with no class from my inbox? That would be great thanks!

Special new button for Andy:

[ Add friend | Add foe | Flush ass-hat ]

+1

I delete all my PMs every month or so and export whatever is important.

The way the system is right now works for me.

Thanks for being so on top of it, though.

I like it the way it is. Then again, in all my time here, I still haven't reached my max message capacity.
And also, I like how you can see whether your message was read or not. That would not be possible if the recipient can already read the message via their email notification. If they feel the content isn't something worth opening here, then it would forever be marked as unread in the sender's folder and thus never really knowing if my $X00 Nag offer is really in consideration

^ OOOOOOhhhhhhh yeah, that's right! Completely forgot about that! That would certainly help deadbeats act like they never saw your PM's saying, "Where's the crap I paid for????"

I guess this idea is nixed. What do you guys who do receive topic / post notification emails think about including post content in the notification emails?

Dont, please. That comment is correct, seeing when someone has seen your message can help in deciding what actions to take afterwards. If you put it in the email, then that kinda loses a lot of its purpose.

^ Right, I just said I'm nixing the idea of putting PM text in the notification email.

My question now is, what do you guys think of putting post text into the post / topic notification emails.

I don't believe the inclusion of the message in the email is necessary. What I do think should be added is on the mobile version to add the ability to see prior messages when writing a new one. Sometimes I forget everything written there and I gotta go back and read and it'd be nice to have a reminder while i write. Just a suggestion James, don't really know if it's gonna clutter up the page.

^ That's a more complicated change since I used an existing template for the mobile version. The only thing I can suggest as an option until I can get that figured out would be to quote the text that you're replying to, and then you can delete the quoted text once you've written what you're writing.