I am seeing suspicious activity in my user to user private message chart. Its been 20 times more in 3 successive days. now how can I detect who has messaged others the most on those days?
AI-generated summary
A user, hnaseri, noticed suspicious activity in their user-to-user private message chart and sought help to detect who messaged others the most on those days. dax suggested checking the latest PMs through a link or running a query with the Data Explorer plugin. fefrei provided a SQL code to retrieve the list of users and PMs in the last 7 days. However, hnaseri found that the RSS link only showed recent messages and asked if the number could be increased.
dax replied that he was unsure if it was possible, but suggested using fefrei’s query method instead. hnaseri later discovered that the culprit behind the high message count was actually the @discobot. JagWaugh joked about the situation and suggested ignoring user IDs less than zero, as bots should not be considered users. hnaseri agreed with the idea, which would have saved them hours of investigation.
If you are an admin you can see the latest PM with a similar link http://your-site.com/private-posts.rss It’s not accurate but you can see if a particular user send more PM in a day.
Or you can run a query to have a list of users and PM in the last X days (you need to install Data explorer plugin).
Something like this SQL query to get the queue of all the PMs in the system - #3 by meglio is a good start point to write your own query.
Make sure you have the Data Explorer plugin installed, navigate to Admin → Plugins → Data Explorer, create a new query and paste in this SQL code:
SELECT user_id, count(*) AS message_count
FROM topics
WHERE archetype = 'private_message' AND subtype = 'user_to_user'
AND age(created_at) < interval '7 days'
GROUP BY user_id
ORDER BY message_count DESC
This will show you all users that have messaged someone in the last 7 days, including the number of messages they have created. (Only new messages count, replies don’t.)
To see the messages, simply click their username and go to Messages → Sent 
I wanted to use that rss link however it only shows me the few recent ones. Is there an option to at least increase the number of message in that rss?
Sincerly I have no idea if this is possible.
The query that @fefrei share for you is certantly a more accurate method and you can change the interval of days in 2 or 3 instead of 7 if you want
It turns out that the culprit is @discobot . I don’t know why its messages are counted as user to user messages. Because to me a bot isn’t a user.
Perhaps the user to user stat should ignore user ids less than zero.
(The bot offering to help Hosein just after he wrote that the bot isn’t a user really made me laugh - did it also send you a PM @hnaseri? )
Exactly it made me laugh too. No I didn’t get any PM.
thats a great Idea if possible. Would have saved me couple of hours.