Some members have noticed that our board's messaging system doesn't seem to work well. We've looked into the matter and determined that it doesn't work well because it was never turned on. (It's somewhat curious that it works at all; and it's curious that the board itself seems to suggest that there is a functioning messaging system even when there's not.)
We've gone back and looked at our logs from when we set up the board, and the decision to not turn on the messaging system was quickly made amidst a flurry of other activity. (Many of you will recall that setting up this board turned out to be a much more ambitious and time consuming undertaking than we anticipated.)
Our recollection now is that we made the decision to not turn on the messaging system because of an experience on another unrelated board where the system was abused by some members, causing a lot of conflict among members and headaches for that board's moderators.
We also thought that we didn't really need it since we didn't have one on the old board.
However, because of the confusion our current board is causing with messaging that seems to exist and that kinda sorta works somewhat, we've decided to turn it on. We don't even know how well it actually works, but we'll see. (If it's problematic, we probably won't be able to spend much time addressing the problems; but we'll see what happens.)
Please don't abuse the messaging system.
In your user profile there is an option to allow messages from other members, or not. So if you feel one way or the other about it, go look at your profile settings.
Thanks for reading,
David
