Send a Private Message To A group of people

[lapinlam]

When trying to organize a team match or a tourney I would like to email a specific list of friends at once.

 

I didn't find this option.

 

Am I missing something ?

[uday]

No such option, except as host of a private club -- too susceptible to abuse.

If someone can think of a way I can protect against abuse I will happily supply a web page that does this

[QuiteACard]

I can think of a couple of options all based on the fundamental concept of "opting-in".

 

Option 1: Use, for lack of a better term, "mutual reciprocity" as the basis for sending "bulk" chat messages. By "mutual reciprocity" I mean that lapinlam can send "bulk" chat messages to members only if lapinlam's name appears on each receiving member's friends list.

 

Option 2: Allow tourney directors to maintain special friends list. Members (and only members) may add/remove themselves to/from these special friends list at any time. Anyone who adds their name to the list explicitly agrees to receive bulk chat messages from this tourney director.

Edited November 19, 2005 by QuiteACard

[jillybean]

Option 2: Allow tourney directors to maintain special friends list. Members (and only members) may add/remove themselves to/from these special friends list at any time. Anyone who adds their name to the list explicitly agrees to receive bulk chat messages from this tourney director.

This is already happening with the new trend of free/private club tournaments advertising to members prior to the start of tournaments.

 

To play you must be a member and so can’t avoid these messages, I find them annoying.

[Deanrover]

Hi Uday,

 

I think you can protect against this if you only allow people who have been members for x amount of time do this.

 

Dean

[Echognome]

Would be a neat feature, especially if it had some flexibility. I think, however, it would be really tough to program and maintain, but maybe (hopefully) I am mistaken.

 

My vision would have users creating 'groups' and then the user must ask people if they want to join the group. That is to say that they actually have to click on them and ask rather than having an automated message (else it could be abused). So say that I, as a user, create a couple of groups of friends. I may have EchoUKfriends as a group, or EchosCoolestFriends group or whatever. Now I ask, say, Uday, to join my groups. Uday says "hey.. I'm not a UK friend, I don't want to join that. But I do want to join Echos Coolest friends group." So Uday can opt out of my UK friends group simply by doing nothing at all. He can opt into my Coolest friends group by select something on his profile which manages his groups. Uday then remains in EchosCoolestFriends group until one day he gets annoyed at the number of messages. So he clicks on his profile and unchecks the group. Another nice feature might be "receive group messages/don't receive group messages" for times when you don't want to be disturbed while playing. Presumably this would automatically go into effect while playing a tourney or teams match. Now when I chat, I can chat to the usual lobby, room, kibitzers, <individual>, but also to <EchoUKfriends>, <EchosCoolestFriends>, or All groups. I guess the last bit in the loop would be to let me manage the group and automatically be able to exclude (but not include) someone from the group.

 

Don't know if that is feasible from a programming perspective, but I think it would cover all of the concerns about bombardment and abuse.

 

 

<posted to wrong forum.> thanks for moving ben!

 

[done -inquiry]

Edited November 20, 2005 by Echognome

[lapinlam]

The "mutual reciprocity" option proposed by QuiteCard

Option 1: Use, for lack of a better term, "mutual reciprocity" as the basis for sending "bulk" chat messages. By "mutual reciprocity" I mean that lapinlam can send "bulk" chat messages to members only if lapinlam's name appears on each receiving member's friends list.

sounds great.

 

In order to take jillybean2's remark into account,

This is already happening with the new trend of free/private club tournaments advertising to members prior to the start of tournaments. To play you must be a member and so can’t avoid these messages, I find them annoying.

an opt-in option "I accept bulk messages from my friends who are akcnowledged as TD" could be added to bbo software.

 

Many thanks in advance to uday for whatever he could do to help in those directions