Question about Locking Users at New User level, and PMs

Support
1

How does the locking out of users from PMs work, when we lock a user at “New User” level.

I thought that it prevented PMs. But we have a situation where a person (actually two people - both the recipient and the sender) are locked at “new user” level - and they are still sending PMs back and forth.

Is there a way to lock all PMs, or at least stop a person from sending PMs?

2

AFAIK TL0 New members can not initiate new messages.

They are not prevented from participating in messages started by others.

At all times were both of these members never above Trust Level 0 ?

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3

See the setting: min trust level to send messages. The default is 1 to create a new personal message, so if they have always been user level 0 and you haven’t changed that setting, then it would seem they shouldn’t be able to create personal messages.

I think that once the personal message is created, though, the cat is out of the bag, so they can continue in that thread.

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4

Thanks. If anyone knows of a way to stop all PMs - and still allow posting in the forums, let me know.

5

Sorry, I thought you were concerned with just level 0 users. Yes, just raise min trust level to 4. Again, I think it’s the case that PMs that are already started will have to be deleted, but that should stop anyone (other than an admin) from creating a personal message.

Oh! I don’t know whether this would also preclude people from using “I want to talk to this person directly and privately about their post” option when flagging a message.

If you can document that a user that is not allowed to send personal messages is allowed to send one through the Flagging interface then you’ve found a bug, or at least a feature request.

6

I can’t help but think this is a “sledge hammer to kill a fly” approach to a problem that might be better solved a different way.

IMHO there are times when a PM is more appropriate than a public discussion so eliminating the feature feels a bit too extreme to me.

7

We have an medically and mentally “at risk” group of users that could be targets for others - so we have to be very careful about people possibly targeting users via PMs. This is not a normal forum issue I suspect.

PMing the moderators should always be allowed - I’m just trying to protect other users.

1 Like
8

You could try tweaking up the min trust level setting and using a plugin I wrote a while ago.

I’ve been intending to put together a PR but haven’t been able to get very far with it so far. More a Real Life getting in the way thing than for any other reason.

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9

Then simply close the specific PM.

Users can always reply to a PM someone has sent them, regardless of their trust level.

So, if you have users PM’ing a new TL0 user, that new user will be able to reply to those PMs.

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