On vBulletin, I can send a PM to somebody by going to my messages and typing a username into a new message. Unless I’m missing something, that’s not possible on Discourse. Instead, you need to visit the member’s Profile page or use the pop-up box from their avatar on a post.
Not very convenient.
Is there any way this can be improved?
Check out [this plugin] (https://meta.discourse.org/t/private-message-button-plugin/14317). That topic also includes some other ways to start a PM.
You are probably right, there should be a way to start a new blank PM from your own user page. But that seems like a very minor convenience.
There are (granted rare) occasions that I “bulk PM” my Team, @HAWK does this somwhat more frequently to draw attention to important threads.
INHO I would like to PM by group eg. “Staff Members” option if possible.
You can PM a group, but only if they are visible to you as an alias. Each group has a setting like "allow group name to be used as an @alias by (no one | staff | group members | everybody).
Note that when you type @groupname it will actually expand and be replaced by the list of group members though.
Cool, sounds like we can do that. I can set up the groups to be used as aliases.
Our use case for wanting to PM an entire group was requested via twitter:
As an admin, I want to be able to message entire groups, specifically b/c we’re using Discourse as a learning forum (e.g. for MOOCs, online synchronous learning experiences, to support open teaching and learning communities, etc).
Reasoning for PMs - Would like to be able to encourage lurkers, congratulate higher trust levels and, of course, mass issue badges when a certain trust level has been reached or upon course completion (i don’t mean Discourse badges, but rather open badges - AKAIK the discourse badges are super beta, you might consider implementing OBI b/c in edtech there are a lot of people excited about Discourse, and they’re badging their learners).
I didn’t realize you could use groups as an alias until this thread (thanks!). I’ve tried it out and found a little bug. It seems that when you use a group alias, if you have more than ca 10 people in the group and you put in the recipients first, it confiscates the “title” field. Then you can’t post without a title. UI bug. (I’m using FF20)
Messaging groups (outside of the experimental community PR you found) is not a primary focus and also can be quite dangerous for everyone. It’s something we look at very cautiously and have no particular desire to rush forward in.
Request soon to be satisfied.
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