The community I manage is still on Facebook, and gaining some control over private messaging is one of the things I really look forward to with Discourse. We have a house rule that people are not to give or take advice in private messages (it’s a support group for managing diabetic cats). Most people are respectful of the rule, but we regularly run into two problematic scenarios:
- a “bad actor” who uses private messaging to users to give advice that goes against our best practices guidelines (or simply, what we allow - circumventing group rules)
- an overenthusiastic helper who gets sucked in a “personal coaching” dynamic through private messages
I’m definitely considering limiting who can contact who through private messages and chat. (Maybe only admins can be messaged.)
We might have group chats, and that would be ok given they can be moderated, but we also want to limit individual chats outside of those, like with private messages.
For me it’s not a question of legal ramifications but of helping us enforce some of the community rules. OTOH I’m aware that being able to communicate privately is how friendships develop, so it might not be ideal to close it down completely. Maybe keep messages, but disallow chat?
I’m also curious about how much access the admin team has to private messages or chats – is it all there in the clear to be read?! Or do we see stats, e.g. who is messaging who and how much?