How do I turn off PM functionality in Discourse?

SomeoneElse · 2022-09-12T18:37:00.789Z

Apparently, Discourse supports private messages. No surprise in that, I guess, and it was something that I think the old forum supported (though I rarely got messages there via that route).

However, yet another PM mechanism is something that I don’t need - it’d be great if users attempting to do this could instead be directed to the existing OSM private message mechanism instead.

mmd · 2022-09-12T18:45:11.411Z

Preferences → Notifications → Uncheck Allow other users to send me personal messages

SomeoneElse:

it’d be great if users attempting to do this could instead be directed to the existing OSM private message mechanism instead.

I think this may be tricky, IIRC, we’re not storing the display name, which would be required to generate the osm.org link to send private messages.

SomeoneElse · 2022-09-12T19:00:33.272Z

Thanks - another reason to move to UID-based APIs, I guess (and yes, I know that that is far from straightforward and someone would actually need to volunteer to do that)?

SomeoneElse · 2022-09-12T20:26:26.057Z

mmd:

Preferences → Notifications → Uncheck Allow other users to send me personal messages

Even with that link, it took me a while to find. On desktop, the route is:

Click on the letter corresponding to the first letter of your user name at the top-right of the screen. The tooltip is the display name.

A menu appears. It has 4 unlabelled tabs. The icons for the tabs offer no clues as to what they do, Select the right-most tab.The tooltip is “Preferences”.

Another menu appears, and this one actually has words on it. Select “Preferences”.

We’re now onto the 3rd different tab paradigm in as many screens - now the tab selection is via vertical words in the left-hand column. On other pages these words are filters, here they act as tabs. Select the word “notifications”. The URL for me is https://community.openstreetmap.org/u/someoneelse/preferences/notifications - I’ve no idea whether that can be directly linked**.

Scroll down. “Allow other users to send me personal messages” is a tickbox. Untick it and click “save changes”.

** Edit: yes, it seems that it can be.

mmd · 2022-09-12T20:45:24.164Z

Oh, I thought navigating to the preferences was a bit more widely known already. I’m posting a few screenshots for clarification:

Step 1: Go to preferences (click on your avatar, then click on the 4th tab in the popup, click on Preferences, as highlighted in yellow):

grafik

Step 2: Click on Notifications in the menu on the left:

grafik308×650 20.5 KB

Step 3: Uncheck this one and save changes:

grafik

mmd · 2022-09-13T13:41:06.595Z

What an epic fail: Discourse would only tell you that a receiver won’t accept personal messages after you’ve typed your message and hit the “Send message” button.

“Sorry, {{username}} is not accepting messages at the moment.”

nukeador · 2022-09-13T13:43:49.412Z

You can report it upstream, it seems like a clear improvement to apply:

Discourse Meta

bug

A bug report means something is broken, preventing normal/typical use of Discourse. Do be sure to search prior to submitting bugs. Include repro steps, and only describe one bug per topic please.

Please, let me know if you would like support reporting this.

Cheers.

SomeoneElse · 2022-09-13T13:57:38.761Z

mmd:

“Sorry, {{username}} is not accepting messages at the moment.”

For completeness, there may also be a couple of other foibles regarding mails to groups, where some of the groups’ members doesn’t accept PMs - but unfortunately I don’'t have time to pin those down at the moment.