# Dividing line between private chat and personal message

**URL:** https://meta.discourse.org/t/dividing-line-between-private-chat-and-personal-message/209976
**Category:** Feature
**Tags:** chat
**Created:** [November 23, 2021, 1:06pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/dividing-line-between-private-chat-and-personal-message/209976 "2021-11-23T13:06:57Z")
**Posts on this page:** 1
**Showing post:** 5

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### Author: ![erlend\_sh](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/meta/user_avatar/meta.discourse.org/erlend_sh/32/119475_2.png) [@erlend\_sh](https://meta.discourse.org/u/erlend_sh)
#### Post date: [November 23, 2021, 1:24pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/dividing-line-between-private-chat-and-personal-message/209976/5 "2021-11-23T13:24:48Z")

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> [@oshyan](#):
>
> Yeah, topic vs. not seems like the most clear dividing line you have to work with, both for general forum discussion and PMs

I agree. But to reinforce that separation, PMs ought to behave more like any other topic. They should appear in the Latest feed alongside all the other topics (but of course only visible to its respective invites).

There were discussions about how to approach this when PMs were first introduced. I think we concluded that treating PMs as something more separate from topics (with its own special feed interface) would ensure a more safe (privacy-protecting) implementation. While it was probably true then, it may not hold up today.

I know @j.jaffeux is also leaning towards making PMs behave more like regular topics.

Found one prior discussion related to this, but I feel there are important ones that I’m missing:

> [@Context mismatch - private messages vs topic](https://meta.discourse.org/t/context-mismatch-private-messages-vs-topic/23215):
>
> This one is plain confusing. Someone posted a question on our forums: [I am getting a 500 Internal Server Error after I restored my public html folder - PHP - SitePoint Forums | Web Development & Design Community](http://community.sitepoint.com/t/i-am-getting-a-500-internal-server-error-after-i-restored-my-public-html-folder/107434) I asked to see the code, and they posted back, failing to properly indent it for code formatting to trigger. I then flagged the post to send them a message, explaining how code highlighting is done. Presumably, the user clicked “edit” and then marked the code and clicked the “code” bu…

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