News & Announcements


Small Updates and Fixes

Report System
The private message system has had the ability to report messages and, until recently, reporting a message only gave you an alert that reporting is disabled and the conversation/message ID in case you needed to message an admin regarding the issue. The report system has now been enabled! To report a message (if you need to), just click the highlight button on a message, choose the category for your report, and give some information about why you are reporting the selected message.

Please do not submit unnecessary or frivolous reports! This system should be used to alert the moderation staff to an issue or request only. The types of issues to report would include violations to the Rules of Conduct. There is an "Other" category in the event you're wanting to flag a message for a reason other than those listed. When using the "Other" category, please be as descriptive as possible in the information box provided.

Message Counter
A message counter has been added to the user profile page that will tell you how many conversations you've participated in and how many messages you've sent in the message system. There's not too much to explain here as this new feature pretty much does exactly what it says on the tin!

Old Conversations
Since we're talking about the message system, we can talk a bit about how it works. Over time, you may notice that conversations will disappear from your inbox if no messages have been posted on them. When a conversation is started, it will stay open to allow the recipient to reply for 7 days (unless locked beforehand by a moderator). If the recipient replies within the 7 day timeframe, the conversation will stay open for another 7 days from the time of the most recent reply to allow the conversation to continue between the participants (again, unless locked by a moderator). If a conversation goes more than 7 days with no activity, it will automatically lock in the system and the participants will be unable to reply to the conversation further. Administrators and Community Managers have a tool that will allow them to set a conversation to never close if they need to ensure the recipient must be able to reply back, even if the 7 day period passes.

Closed conversations will remain in both recipients inboxes for a period of 90 days before they expire and will no longer appear on the inbox page list. This feature is to help keep inboxes de-cluttered by way of removing old, inactive conversations automatically while still allowing a user plenty of time to review or archive their conversation if they wish to do so. This expiration is different than when a conversation is hidden by a moderator as a moderator hidden conversation will remain in the inbox with the text "This conversation has been hidden."

Now that you know a little bit about how this system works, a bug was recently identified that caused conversations to expire and disappear from the inboxes long before the 90 day period passed. This bug was caused by a typographical error in the code logic surrounding the mathematical equation that calculates when conversations should be closed or expired for inactivity. Not to worry, it has now been fixed!

Thank you for your patience!

-The NormanNetworksITS Team
Last updated on 28 May 2024 22:08