[dilbert]

"You can lead a horse to water but you can't make him walk on it" may be more appropriate in this instance...dilbert

[michael delamar]

Alan carr puts it best here, 8mins 10 secs in........




Mike

[Max Stafford]

Andy. Why do I feel like a thick b*****d...?

Dave.

[Bloodnok]

cornelius, on 23 January 2010 - 05:10 , said:

Andy, have you noticed an increase in this happening since moving to the new software? On the previous forum the message itself wasn't included in the email so you had to click through to the site to read it at all - that surely must have helped make it more obvious?

Last time I was involved in running a forum I noticed this correlation - make people go to the forum to read the message and you don't get these errant messages, but you do get complaints that the message doesn't copy the contents of the message "like some other forums do". Turn that on, and all of a sudden, you start getting people's PM replies to whatever the forum thinks it's email address is.

The "most user friendly" solution I could come up with was to make the reply-to address of the notification the actual email address of the sender, as registered on the forum. That way, hitting 'reply' in their email client works as intended. But that, of course, needs the permission of the person sending the PM to expose their email address to the recipient. Shouldn't be too much of a problem, as they want to talk to the person they are sending a PM to, but you only need one person to get upset about it for it to become an issue...

[craigwelsh]

Bloodnok, on 27 January 2010 - 05:39 , said:

The "most user friendly" solution I could come up with was to make the reply-to address of the notification the actual email address of the sender, as registered on the forum. That way, hitting 'reply' in their email client works as intended. But that, of course, needs the permission of the person sending the PM to expose their email address to the recipient. Shouldn't be too much of a problem, as they want to talk to the person they are sending a PM to, but you only need one person to get upset about it for it to become an issue...

I don't think many share their email on here apart from the admin reason, I would prefer to keep pm's to the pm system.

You'd ideally want these sent by a 'noreply@rmweb.co.uk' address that gets a sender failed..

[JZjr]

Maybe just sending an e-mail saying 'You have a new Private Message, visit RMweb.co.uk to read it'. This way the recipient will now know what the PM says and there is no need to reply until its read... is this possible with the forum software?

[Andy Y]

It's a pain to do so Fred; I may get round to it when we've moved server.

Still the emails come, it's so tempting to ask if they kept the box the computer came in sometimes.

[JZjr]

Ok, fair enough!

I'm sure people will start to understand soon enough.

[samkiller42]

Maybe you could include a small audio file, in the voice of one of the automated platform announcers saying: "I'm sorry to announce that the button above labelled 'Reply' will not work with this email. I'm very sorry for the inconvenience this will cause"

Ok maybe not, but it sounded good in one's head.

Sam

[Coombe Barton]

A possible Haiku

If you hit reply
Your mail will go to limbo
Please RTFM

[DavidH]

Frustrating though it is, I think we should all give the senders of these messages a break - not everyone knows how to program forums, set up networks, load software, configure this and that ...

[Bloodnok]

craigwelsh, on 28 January 2010 - 01:18 , said:

I don't think many share their email on here apart from the admin reason, I would prefer to keep pm's to the pm system.

I have a different opinion of sharing my email address on a webpage to using it as a reply-to on a notification email that something I did (i.e. sending a PM) triggered. I'm highly unlikely to get large quantities of spam from the latter.

Quote

You'd ideally want these sent by a 'noreply@rmweb.co.uk' address that gets a sender failed.

That's not good - it's a valid address, which you'd have to have a server sitting on, bouncing messages. That's frowned on in email terms now. Either blackhole them (silently drop them in the bin) or use something like personal-message-notification@rmweb.do.not.reply.invalid - where the top level domain is obviously invalid. This will fail locally in the client, hopefully with a much more helpful error message than an apparently successful delivery followed by a cryptic message arriving sometime later. At the very least, they'll be aware that something is wrong with the address they are trying to send to, and might then read the message a bit more and find the link...

[Pennine MC]

DavidH, on 28 January 2010 - 00:50 , said:

Frustrating though it is, I think we should all give the senders of these messages a break - not everyone knows how to program forums, set up networks, load software, configure this and that ...

And as was said earlier, it appears that not everybody can read something in plain English that says DO NOT REPLY DIRECTLY TO THIS EMAIL...

Sorry, but I still fail to see what this has to do with someone's IT knowledge. You might as well say it's OK to drive through a red light just because you dont know how your car's brake cylinders work

[michael delamar]

Sorry Andy I did this today, I replied to a notification thinking it was an email from someone as I had asked people to email me, had a few emails and a couple of pm notifications and went and pressed it, I realised as soon as I pressed the button, and I thought to myself "you tit!"


sorry

Mike

[john dew]

I dont know whether this is the correct place to apologise.........but I have done it twice today I am sorry and will undoubtedly remember next time

In extenuation I dont get many PMs on this Forum and unlike the other forum that I am on the body of the PM is set out in the PM notification......you dont even have to go into RM Web to access it..........I am afraid the warning at the bottom got overlooked like all the legal caveats you get at the bottom of many emails. Anyway Mea Culpa.............I do apologise......I truly hate being dumb and causing other people trouble

Regards from Vancouver

[Andy Y]

john dew, on 22 March 2010 - 23:41 , said:

I truly hate being dumb and causing other people trouble

No problems John, it doesn't actually cause me any problems, I just worry that the intended recipient doesn't get the message.

[coachmann]

Perhaps at a tangent here but slightly related for all that, I opened my PM's today and notice the sender (a friend) has the word 'Block' in red below his picture. What does it signify? (His messages are getting through).

Larry

[martin_wynne]

coachmann, on 23 March 2010 - 10:57 , said:

Perhaps at a tangent here but slightly related for all that, I opened my PM's today and notice the sender (a friend) has the word 'Block' in red below his picture. What does it signify? (His messages are getting through).

Hi Larry,

There is actually no such thing as a conventional PM on RMweb. What there is instead is a "conversation" which is in effect a private topic limited to a few invited participants (the current limit is 5). Members of a conversation can invite others to join in, up to the limit -- there is a link on the left for this. Of course, most of the time you invite only one other to join your private conversation by sending them the first message, so the effect is the same as exchanging private messages.

If you are the originator of a "conversation", i.e. you sent the first message in it, you have the power to control who is permitted to post to it. If you or someone else invited Kermit the Frog to join in, and then you don't like his contributions, you can click Block under his name. He will no longer be able to post to your conversation. If you change your mind, you can then click Unblock under his name.

Of course, if there are only two members in a conversation, blocking the other member makes for a rather one-sided discussion.

regards,

Martin.

[Oldddudders]

martin_wynne, on 23 March 2010 - 12:28 , said:

Of course, if there are only two members in a conversation, blocking the other member makes for a rather one-sided discussion.

Perfect! I can pontificate away, and no-one will tell me wot a prat I am!