There’s this one member I want to ask a personal question of, but he has disabled PMs. I don’t know if that was on purpose or part of the Discourse transition.
What is the etiquette here? I’m thinking life goes on without satisfying my curiosity.
~Max
I figure that if someone doesn’t want PMs, they don’t want PMs, and I would leave it at that unless they post in such a way that suggests they didn’t mean to disable that feature. Such as posting, “Anyone who has an answer can PM me.” In a case like that, I’d reply to that post letting them know that they have PMs disabled. I would then assume they would say, “Oops, let me turn that on, my mistake.”
Generally though I respect disabled PMs like I respect a “do not disturb” sign. I assume it was intentional and refrain from bothering them, even if it becomes slightly inconvenient for me.
Fair enough.
~Max
Maybe he might post in a thread where your question would be appropriate?
It was a personal question. The main concern here was that PMs might have been disabled by default after transitioning from vBulletin. I believe all transitioned users had their profile automatically set to hidden, so maybe they had PMs disabled too.
~Max
I know from personal experience that turned-off PMs are a “do not disturb” sign that is to be respected. A while back, a poster who is practically my neighbor IRL posted photos and comments in a thread about property maintenance. I wanted to ask who he had hired to do some of the work, because that would have been useful information to me. This poster operates (or did at the time anyway) a vacation rental/B&B business, about which he had shared info with posters. So to a large extent he had “self-doxxed.”
I asked in the thread if he could PM me with information about who he’d hired, but he never responded (we didn’t have the “@-poster” option then so I couldn’t draw his attention to my question; for all I know he never saw it. Or he may have chosen to ignore me for reasons of his own; I will never know for sure.)
He had his PMs turned off, but like Max_S I had some doubt as to whether that was deliberate, given his high level of personal information sharing. I inquired as to whether it would be appropriate to ask the mods to forward a note from me.
The feedback I got made it VERY clear that I was quite out of line. I’m not sure I fully understand why (although in retrospect I think I was a little rude to expect the mods to play mail carrier for me), but I accept that it is a hard and fast rule and will abide by it.
I think the Do Not Disturb comparison makes sense. If someone has a sign on their door that says Do Not Disturb, it means they want to be left alone, not that they want to be left alone unless you have a question for them.
Having a mod bypass that makes turning it off pointless.
The way I see it, OP has a few options.
Drop the subject and move on.
Try to organically bring it up in a thread and see if the person responds and go from there.
Start a new thread, @ the person, tell them you’d like to PM them and see what happens. However, if you @ them, I wouldn’t push it beyond that one request and make it clear it’s up to them and no big deal if they simply pretend not to have seen the thread.
I agree that with the “@” option, it is perfectly reasonable to have a hard and fast rule about respecting turned-off PMs (though I do see the point of @Max_S 's question, since the transition to Discourse makes it less clear that the turned-off PMs are deliberate).
In my case, there was no @ feature (so I didn’t know if he’d even seen my question), and the poster I wanted to reach seemed very happy to share loads of identifying info (and my question wasn’t even personal). Under those conditions, I didn’t think it was out of line to broach the subject of how to contact a member whose PMs were turned off.
I asked, I got an answer, and like Max_S I was willing to live with it. I just don’t think I was particularly out of line for asking. Not that abuse was heaped on me or anything, I was just a little surprised at the undertone of “how could you even ask such a thing!” in the feedback I got.
An aside: the poster I was trying to reach is a big Trump fan, of whom there are not a whole lot in my town. Every time there is a rally (or, now that the election is over, an anti-vax protest that attracts the same crowd) I wonder if he’s among the 10-20 people holding signs. Not gonna walk up and ask, though!
I don’t remember PMs ever being disabled for me. I definitely never did anything to reennabble them. I do see that Trust Level 0 people can’t send PMs, but I believe everyone was upgraded to at least Level 1, if not Level 2.
I wouldn’t say it’s impossible that some people had PMs disabled, but I would say it’s most likely not the case.
I will say I would be interested in a thread where people might be willing to discuss why they disabled PMs.
Finally, a related question: @codinghorror What happens on Discourse if someone has you on mute or ignore, with regards to PMs?
Maybe I’m paranoid, but that’s always the first thought that goes through my head when I can’t PM someone somewhere: do they not want PMs, or is it just me?
I should think it blocks PMs, at least for Ignored users. Try Ignoring another user for a short time and ask them to send you a PM. Or vice versa.