Moderator
James Huff
(@macmanx)
Volunteer Moderator
No, we don’t have a way to do private or direct messages here.
Thanks for the reply James. Where might be the appropriate place to post a feature request for this? It really isn’t a WordPress request but more of a support tool request.
Moderator
James Huff
(@macmanx)
Volunteer Moderator
It’s been discussed before and is not something we’ll consider for the WordPress support forums.
Everyone here is volunteering time, and facilitating direct content will open a way to abuse that time.
Good point as I hadn’t thought about moderators being inundated with messages. I wanted to contact another poster who was not a moderator.
One option that might be considered is to provide an opt-out field in the profile that turns off the ability to get PM messages. That way a user may decide whether or not they are able to be contacted. I run a forum that has that option. That way a poster could ask “So and So” please contact me via direct message.
Since it is contrary to the forum rules to post email addresses or external links, it would provide a method to initiate contact. As it is now, there is no way to contact someone external to posting.
Is it contrary to forum rules to post something like. “So and So” please contact me using the web contact form at this link (some link goes here)?
Moderator
James Huff
(@macmanx)
Volunteer Moderator
What would be your purpose for contacting someone here with a private or direct message, rather than posting in the public forums?
Moderator
James Huff
(@macmanx)
Volunteer Moderator
Sorry, sent before I added the second part.
Is it contrary to forum rules to post something like. “So and So” please contact me using the web contact form at this link (some link goes here)?
Yes, that is against the forum guidelines: https://wordpress.org/support/guidelines/#we-reserve-the-right-to-manage-the-forums-to-the-best-of-our-ability
The contact was between me and another user who wanted to trade files on a plugin that had not been updated for PHP 8.2. The developer changed their business model and instead of having the free plugin with all the features, moved features to their own site with a subscription. The plugin as it was originally intended has been basically abandoned and held hostage for their business model. The plugin as it is now is basically a portal to their own site that hosts user data. It does still work if a user has existing data in their WordPress setup (the plugin uses custom tables). The problem is the self hosted part of the plugin has not been updated and has outdated libraries with some deprecated code. Those of us who have time (and lots of data) invested came up with some patches as a work around , but that is not officially supported.
I posted a link with the files to make them available for anyone and asked if anyone else had errors to report, but the post was deleted by a moderator as it wasn’t part of the developers SVN or Git.
Sorry for the long winded response….
Moderator
James Huff
(@macmanx)
Volunteer Moderator
the post was deleted by a moderator as it wasn’t part of the developers SVN or Git
Even if we had private or direct messages, that still would have been a violation of forum guidelines, just like it was when posted publicly.
Ok – hence the circular argument that started this 🙂
If users had a way of contacting people who were willing to be contacted, they could communicate directly with each other without violating the forum guidelines.
So… is there a method to submit a request to enhance forum user communications?
Moderator
James Huff
(@macmanx)
Volunteer Moderator
We discuss it almost yearly since https://meta.trac.wordpress.org/ticket/10
The thread you’ve openned here is the right way to make a feature request, and our answer at this time continues to be:
It’s been discussed before and is not something we’ll consider for the WordPress support forums.
https://wordpress.org/support/topic/contacting-a-registered-user/?view=all#post-17348611
