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    There is something seriously wrong with the forum's Private Messaging system. Some messages I receive from other users are arriving as blanks. Some I send are doing the same to other users. I'm only getting online notifications of new messages about half the time. In one case, a message sat for two weeks before I accidentally stumbled on it. Although I have myself set to get emails notifying me of PMs, I am receiving none. With that in mind, rather than being constantly aggravated by having half conversations, I am shutting down my ability to send and receive PMs. Sorry. I urge management to look into why this is happening now. When I oversaw the process, I never had these problems, nor did I hear complaints about such from anyone else. Obviously, someone in management is playing with settings, and they don't know what they are doing. When Jack and I ran those things, we never heard those complaints because we cleaned up the member feature settings. In the past, before us, it seemed as no two members were set up the same way initially. We standardized member levels and set rules as to when they changed. I recently read messages here about wannabe users that never received confirmation messages or were denied membership for reasons unknown. I looked into how users were initially approved or unapproved for forum membership when I was a Moderator. This was out of the Moderator's hands at the time and I assume, if there was a Moderator now, it would still be out of their hands. One particular member of Management handled the initial approval of all members, according to logs I read. They had higher Administrative access than Jack and I had, and reading logs was the closest we could get to that subject. As best as I could see, there was no rhyme or reason as to why some people were approved and others not. I fear that this person or some other person in Management is now making changes to the forum member settings that Jack and I worked so hard to get working correctly.
    Furthermore, with regard to the forum itself, I intend to limit my posting here now and in the future. I really have nothing to post about publicly. I use StreamFab for exactly one TV show, my wife's soap opera, Days of Our Lives, on Peacock. The soap opera is not readily available by Torrenting. All my video downloading is now done via Torrenting. I can't continue to use a system that works for a while and then doesn't for almost 6 months. Now that Peacock is working again, I realistically have nothing to talk about here, and so I won't.

    #2
    Originally posted by Cats4U View Post
    There is something seriously wrong with the forum's Private Messaging system. Some messages I receive from other users are arriving as blanks. Some I send are doing the same to other users. I'm only getting online notifications of new messages about half the time. In one case, a message sat for two weeks before I accidentally stumbled on it. Although I have myself set to get emails notifying me of PMs, I am receiving none. With that in mind, rather than being constantly aggravated by having half conversations, I am shutting down my ability to send and receive PMs. Sorry. I urge management to look into why this is happening now. When I oversaw the process, I never had these problems, nor did I hear complaints about such from anyone else. Obviously, someone in management is playing with settings, and they don't know what they are doing. When Jack and I ran those things, we never heard those complaints because we cleaned up the member feature settings. In the past, before us, it seemed as no two members were set up the same way initially. We standardized member levels and set rules as to when they changed. I recently read messages here about wannabe users that never received confirmation messages or were denied membership for reasons unknown. I looked into how users were initially approved or unapproved for forum membership when I was a Moderator. This was out of the Moderator's hands at the time and I assume, if there was a Moderator now, it would still be out of their hands. One particular member of Management handled the initial approval of all members, according to logs I read. They had higher Administrative access than Jack and I had, and reading logs was the closest we could get to that subject. As best as I could see, there was no rhyme or reason as to why some people were approved and others not. I fear that this person or some other person in Management is now making changes to the forum member settings that Jack and I worked so hard to get working correctly.
    Furthermore, with regard to the forum itself, I intend to limit my posting here now and in the future. I really have nothing to post about publicly. I use StreamFab for exactly one TV show, my wife's soap opera, Days of Our Lives, on Peacock. The soap opera is not readily available by Torrenting. All my video downloading is now done via Torrenting. I can't continue to use a system that works for a while and then doesn't for almost 6 months. Now that Peacock is working again, I realistically have nothing to talk about here, and so I won't.
    I'm not surprised - I've never received a single email regarding PMs, just as I never received a single rescue email so I could reset my password to log into the forum. Now the PM "messages" icon at the top of the page doesn't indicate unread PMs any more, either.

    Your not posting here is going to leave a big hole - you've helped a lot of people here, and I still can't believe you used up one of your three free trial downloads to troubleshoot an issue I had. The fact that Management treated you so poorly and didn't realize what a resource they had in you pretty much says it all - there's a compound word that describes it, but I'm pretty sure I'd be banned if I posted it.
    Last edited by artsunlimited; 06-30-2024, 07:33 AM.

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      #3
      I assume you must mean for people allowed to send you messages. I tried sending one once, something to the effect I'm not allowed to.

      Comment


        #4
        Very bad mismanagement and administrators.
        I worked on many types of forums and never saw these problems.
        I do know some forums would require an admin to activate posting, which seems to be a main issue here, as no one seems to care about activating posting for new accounts
        Seems they want you to contact them either via a contact form or a support ticket.

        With that and all the years I spent on forums, some as moderator and even some as admin, I never saw issues with the message system or what some call PM's.
        I have seen where the emails stop going out, and they have to reset their smtp service.
        This will keep being an issue if they insist people reset their passwords.

        I was a bit spoiled at a few forums because I was either moderator or admin, There was no time limit in editing posts.(like there is here) There were some other advantages, but not going into them.
        I do know that in most forums I worked with, moderators had less access to settings than admins.
        The main idea of moderators is to lock posts, edit posts if needed, or issue warnings. Then the admins would step in if issues.

        I am not sure what's up with this forum, as so many things seem off. The fact it can take a minute if not longer to post any type of message, long or short, is not good.
        Now no email notifications, which many say worked. I know I did get an activation email but even after clicking that I had no posting abilities and got other messages like you can't do that or access that just trying to subscribe to topics. I used the contact form under contact us, and then they replied in the member's support section.

        So overall as I have not seen some of the issues firsthand nor saw it in any other forum I can only surmise it's either old forum software, possible database issues, or even server issues.
        I made sure the database was always optimized, which not only fixed minor issues, but would speed database operations up.
        Hope they do that or fix it before there is no forum.
        Last edited by Stan001; 07-01-2024, 03:46 AM.
        What a waste of time, streamfab so-called support.

        Comment


          #5
          You guys have no idea what's going on, do you? Those are not private Messages; they are Direct Messages, and anyone with Admin privileges can read them, alter them, or delete them. Do your homework. They are DMs, not PMs.
          Programmer in Python, Java, JavaScript, Swift, PHP, SQL, C#, C++, Go, R

          Comment


            #6
            I don't know about vBulletin, I learned to hate it with a passion many moons ago when customers insisted on me installing it and setting it up. With phpBB Admins and Mods CANNOT read PMs, phpBBs private messaging module. Someone with mySQL access and permissions can though if they know how to find them in the tables.

            email notifications stopped working for me about 3 weeks ago. I did submit several helpdesk tickets redarding the forum's SMTP issues about a week or more ago. Today I got a shitload of messages so maybe the chimps under the hood finally fixed it.
            Win11 Pro 22H2, no bloatware, no spyware, no crapware, no TPM, no Secure Boot, no MS account. And yes, you can dual boot 7 and 11.

            Comment


              #7
              Originally posted by NewMelle View Post
              I don't know about vBulletin, I learned to hate it with a passion many moons ago when customers insisted on me installing it and setting it up. With phpBB Admins and Mods CANNOT read PMs, phpBBs private messaging module. Someone with mySQL access and permissions can though if they know how to find them in the tables.

              email notifications stopped working for me about 3 weeks ago. I did submit several helpdesk tickets redarding the forum's SMTP issues about a week or more ago. Today I got a shitload of messages so maybe the chimps under the hood finally fixed it.
              There are addons you can buy to read Vbulletin DMs or PMs. If you go to their site, any Admin can add it. But you need Administrative access.
              Programmer in Python, Java, JavaScript, Swift, PHP, SQL, C#, C++, Go, R

              Comment


                #8
                One more reason to dislike vBulletin. Knowing the culture all to well it would not surprise me in the least. Integrity is not high on the priority list for Ferengi.

                I spoke too soon. Not receiving email notifications again. SMTP server authentication may have failed, server is down, or more likely broken on purpose.
                Win11 Pro 22H2, no bloatware, no spyware, no crapware, no TPM, no Secure Boot, no MS account. And yes, you can dual boot 7 and 11.

                Comment


                  #9
                  Rattled their cage again several times. Just heard back from "support" and they confirm an SMTP server issue. They say their "tech" is looking into it and need some time to work it out. I've set up Apache, cPanel, SQL, SMTP and numerous CMS packages as well as PHP based forums (even a few CGI back in the day). I guess it's a lot harder these days. Haven't seen the PM issue yet but only have a couple of conversations going.
                  Win11 Pro 22H2, no bloatware, no spyware, no crapware, no TPM, no Secure Boot, no MS account. And yes, you can dual boot 7 and 11.

                  Comment

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