This may or may not be by design, but I got a PM from the exalted HB himself, and was frustrated to see that I couldn't respond to it because he, for what I'm sure are good reasons, rejects PMs. And it was so laudatory too! Anyway, I'd propose that the logic be changed slightly, so that one could respond to a PM from someone no matter what their setting was with respect to getting unsolicited ones.

Best,
David

The "Inbox" setting on this board is intentionally small to encourage members to transition to regular e-mail instead of relying on forum-based personal messages for offline communication with other members. I have my profile options set to accept e-mail but not personal messages, if for no other reason that I don't want yet another e-mail system to monitor.

I agree the error message when attempting to reply to a user who doesn't want PMs is vague ("Some users couldn't be added as they have disabled personal message receipt."). At a minimum it should propose "Try e-mailing them" and ideally should redirect you to their e-mail form. I will add that to my to-do list. In the meantime, any member can contact me via my profile's e-mail form (click the envelope icon to the right of this message) or directly using my e-mail address (refer to the Contact Us link at the bottom of the page).

HB wrote:The "Inbox" setting on this board is intentionally small to encourage members to transition to regular e-mail instead of relying on forum-based personal messages for offline communication with other members. I have my profile options set to accept e-mail but not personal messages, if for no other reason that I don't want yet another e-mail system to monitor.

Hi Dan,

My quibble is slightly different. Had you emailed me, I would of course have responded via email. But since you initiated the contact via PM, my natural inclination was to respond via the same channel. If what you're saying is that you're trying to discourage private messaging, sending a member a private message is a somewhat counterintuitive way to go about it. So perhaps you might do something like make the PM icon smaller and the email one larger, but I still think that if the initiator of the communication uses a particular channel for whatever reason, it's logical to allow the recipient to respond likewise rather than to force her to switch in mid-message.

Best,
David

DavidMLewis wrote:My quibble is slightly different. Had you emailed me, I would of course have responded via email. But since you initiated the contact via PM, my natural inclination was to respond via the same channel.

I understand your quibble. From a coding viewpoint, it would be more difficult to make exceptions depending upon the means of delivery. An easy compromise is an automatic switch, i.e., if someone wants to reply to a PM from someone who prefers e-mail, the e-mail form is automatically shown.

DavidMLewis wrote:If what you're saying is that you're trying to discourage private messaging, sending a member a private message is a somewhat counterintuitive way to go about it.

Agreed, it's odd. The problem is that a fair amount of members register with "throwaway" e-mails for fear of spam (*), but they leave contact via the e-mail form enabled. The result is someone who appears to be contactable via e-mail but in fact isn't. That's why I use PMs if they're enabled. In my future use, I will be certain to mention my e-mail in the PM to avoid confusion (e.g., "Please reply via my e-mail xxx" at the end of the note).

Another option is simply to disable PMs / only allow e-mail contact site-wide. Personally I've never seen much value in a forum-based Inbox other than allowing semi-anonymous correspondence. If someone really wanted that, they could always register with a disposable e-mail purely for that purpose.

(*) For the record, registration e-mails are never shown anywhere in the board's interface except the owner's own profile settings.

I also tried to message a response to Dan. I assumed he felt he would be inundated by messages, so was OK with that.

I prefer PMs when it comes to messages from members of a board like this. I get too much email as it is.

HB wrote:Personally I've never seen much value in a forum-based Inbox other than allowing semi-anonymous correspondence. If someone really wanted that, they could always register with a disposable e-mail purely for that purpose.

I still think it is a valuable tool, even if it is very limited in use/space. It is informal enough that you know you will not bother anyone, and many folks disabled the contact via e-mail option when they registered with HB, so there is no other way to contact them directly. Of course, I've also personally sent PMs that have gone unresponded to for many, many months. Some never at all (if a forum member left and never returned, or if I gave up and pulled it from the PM outbox).