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.