IMPORTANT ANNOUNCEMENT REGARDING PMs!

Mindi · #1 July 15th, 2008, 02:51 PM

As many of you may know by now, we're getting ready to upgrade the site and forum software. In our testing of the import process to the new software we discovered that the PM database is completely out of control. We have never put official limits around PM boxes, but it seems some people are abusing this feature and never deleting anything. This slows down the import process significantly and takes up a lot of room on the server.

Therefore, the new forums will have PM limits installed that will not allow you to have more than 100 total PMs (in and out box combined) at one time or you won't be able to receive additional PMs. Before everyone starts yelling, also you should know that in the new software there are simple buttons where you can download your PMs to a CSV, XML or Text file. So in the future, staying under the limit should not be a problem for anyone. Moderators and Administrators are getting slightly larger boxes based on the fact they have to do corrective communication with users and if you fit into one of those categories, please see the moderator forum for more information.

However, the problem we now have is that we need to get everyone in compliance with this new limit before we do the site and software change. So starting now, everyone needs to work on their PM box and get the total messages under 100 PMs and as quickly as possible so this issue does not keep interfering with our testing process for the site conversion. If your PMs are not cleaned up before the site conversion, we will delete everything but your latest 100 PMs to make sure everyone is in compliance.

For most people, these limits won't even affect them. Less than 2% of our registered members have over 100 PMs, but those 2% make up over 2/3rds of our PM database, making their total number of PMs to be about 69,000 PMs! The highest person has over 3,000 PMs which is just freakin ridicuous. So it's time to clean it up folks, or we'll be cleaning it up for you.

Please contact me if you have any questions.

Suicide Junkie · #2 July 15th, 2008, 03:21 PM

Wow, that's a lot of PMs. I like to think I'm reasonably popular around here, and I don't think I've gotten even 100 PMs from the forumites. (plenty of notifications from admin and such, but not conversational PMs)

"[less than 100] or you won't be able to receive additional PMs."
Wouldn't it be better to have the oldest ones be deleted at that point, rather than (effectively) the newest ones being deleted?

Fyron · #3 July 15th, 2008, 03:39 PM

3000 PMs?? Yikes! Good luck trying to pick 100 to save out of that, whomever you are!

Mindi · #4 July 15th, 2008, 03:44 PM

I think this is more of a problem in the Dominions community because of the amount of multiplayer conversation going on in PMs. But I wanted to make sure you guys were also aware of this change.

I was even guilty of keeping way to much history stuff for moderation purposes, but I just cut and pasted the ones I needed to keep into a word document. Then again, I had a lot of admin alerts that were easy to delete, so I had no were near the numbers our top ten have in legitimate messages.

Mindi · #5 July 15th, 2008, 03:47 PM

SJ: Actually it's caused by the forum software, I think it simply refuses to let you have more unless you delete some, but I will look into it to see if there is any other settings.

narf poit chez BOOM · #6 July 15th, 2008, 03:59 PM

Fair; I'm off to check my PMs.

132 total. Hmm...

There. 100 total.

Renegade 13 · #7 July 15th, 2008, 04:09 PM

62 in my inbox, 2 in outbox...

The oldest from May of 2004... ok it may not be over 100, but most of these can go!

Atrocities · #8 July 15th, 2008, 04:28 PM

I cleared my PM bank. sorry about not doing that sooner, I didn't realize that I had over 200. Yikes!

Mindi · #9 July 15th, 2008, 04:29 PM

LOL, well we're only cracking down on those with totals over 100, but any messages you can get rid of will speed up the final import, which means less down time......so by all means purge whatever you don't want!

Ed Kolis · #10 July 15th, 2008, 05:24 PM

91 in, 6 out... phew, just made it!

Though I suppose I should start deleting some in case someone decides to send me four more! Some of my PM's date back to 2003

Out of curiousity, what forum software are you upgrading to? A new version of UBB, or Something Completely Different? And what's happening to the rest of the site?

edit: P.S. in the new site, are the Shrapnel logos on the page header going to be links back to the main site? That would be handy...