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Council Spotlight: Would you want personal messages?

  • Article

First of all, please read this post from Peter Laker:

 

We're continuing our discussion with the community about the migration process and the new platform. We started this conversation last week:

There are many different topics to chat about, and this one randomly popped into my mind. It's been something we've discussed for many years...

 

Would you want personal messages?

First, this is just a discussion. We don't know what the platform would be like. But let's discuss whether or not things like this would even be valuable. What would we use it for?

I have some loose ideas of how personal messages could help us run a community authoring system, but let's see what you think.

Before we make decisions and inform you of them, we'll listen first. Please answer the question in the comments below.

Here is a list of some roles that might need to communicate:

  1. Contributor to Moderator
  2. Moderator to Contributor
  3. Moderator to Moderator/Admin

 

Thank you!

Join the World. Join the Community.

- Ninja Ed

Comments

  • Anonymous
    August 30, 2018
    As per my personal opinion, there should be functionality for personal messages, where Moderator/Admin can connect with contributor or Moderator. Even personal messages are important to advice if need any modification or correction in article.
    • Anonymous
      August 30, 2018
      Sounds good. So in that scenario, the Moderator would be giving direction to a Contributor. Correct? I can see this needed if the Moderator wants to encourage the Contributors to follow specific standards, like including See Also links to other Docs articles, or linking out to resources. Or perhaps to format code, or other such tweaks and improvements. Maybe how to use headers in order to build out an article-level TOC? Thanks, Kamlesh!
      • Anonymous
        August 30, 2018
        Yes Ed, exactly that is the main point for connection between Moderator and Contributor. So they can work closely to write a great article. This type of private relationship will help to encourage contributor to post a good content with quality.
        • Anonymous
          August 31, 2018
          That's a good point. TNWiki has comments now, but (1) You never know if the author is going to see the comments. (2) Those conversations are often better in private. And (3) The Docs platform replaced comments (which they had) with a GitHub "Issues" feature so that the comments are more like open issues that the authors/moderators can close.So a private message would provide a lot of value in that scenario.
  • Anonymous
    August 30, 2018
    thanks for sharing Ed,> Personal messages is a must in my opinion! We spoke about this several years ago and several times since. 1. Internal messages can help Moderator to alert user on something that they have done without the need to put it in public! I really have to comment someone in public and sometime I spend several hours to try find his Facebook or other communication channel in order to comment him something. Other Moderators simply harry to ban new users but this might be simple mistake.2. Internal messages can help in passing some personal information which we cannot pass in the forum in public, for example if a user have issue in the Azure, sometime we will need to examine his account which mean we need some information that should not be pass in public3. Probably one of the most important reason is that we want to have a community, and not just Q&A system,, and community means that we need a direct communication channel between the members.... There are lot other reason we can raise and in short its i simply something that is a must in any community - Personal messages is a must!
    • Anonymous
      August 31, 2018
      "> Personal messages is a must in my opinion! We spoke about this several years ago and several times since."Transparently, yes. This is something we haven't gotten, even though it has been requested for at least a decade. That's just simply a fact. It's certainly been requested for the 8 years I've been on MSDN/TechNet. The Microsoft Q&A platform has a limited personal message system. I think Moderators can start PMs, and then Contributors can respond in those PMs. But Contributors cannot start PMs, even with Moderators. I think that's how the platform works (anyone with more experience can help correct me or expand on that). Wikipedia has a comment system, where lots of admins argue through the details. But I believe it's all public. (It's just hidden from traffic so very few people see it.) So to Saeid's point (about the value of transparency), that could be another route to take... to put it all somewhere, like in a tab you have to click through to get to, like Wikipedia does, or even on GitHub. But the notification system would have to be strong and easy enough so that people read and reply to those messages.
      • Anonymous
        August 31, 2018
        Hi Ed,>> The Microsoft Q&A platform has a limited personal message system.If you are talking about the answers system (https://answers.microsoft.com) then I don't think there is any personal message even for Microsoft Admins (can't be sure but I am pretty sure).>> I think Moderators can start PMs, and then Contributors can respond in those PMs. But Contributors cannot start PMs, even with Moderators. I think that’s how the platform worksThis limited option is actually covers the main needs, but.. yes, we want more ;-)
        • Anonymous
          August 31, 2018
          Yes, that's the system I'm referring to. I heard they have that feature set (the people who built the platform told me), but I'm not a moderator over there, so I haven't verified what exists.
    • Anonymous
      August 31, 2018
      "1. Internal messages can help Moderator to alert user on something that they have done without the need to put it in public! I really have to comment someone in public and sometime I spend several hours to try find his Facebook or other communication channel in order to comment him something. Other Moderators simply harry to ban new users but this might be simple mistake."You hit another fantastic scenario! Often, we have to remove content, deny content, or simply ban someone. First, we'd want to build checks and balances into the platform to make banning less needed. But it will still come up. That's when you really need to warn the contributor of their behavior and give them a chance to understand what's happening, to stop what's about to get them banned, and ultimately a chance to change your behavior. You and I (and others) have worked hard to give community members a chance to stop, before they get banned. I think that's super important. With a tool like personal messages, it becomes much more possible to handle a situation like that in the best way for everyone! Like you mentioned, in those situations, personal messages become a must... a basic necessity!
    • Anonymous
      August 31, 2018
      “2. Internal messages can help in passing some personal information which we cannot pass in the forum in public, for example if a user have issue in the Azure, sometime we will need to examine his account which mean we need some information that should not be pass in public”Oh my goodness! What another great scenario! I didn’t even think of this one! We try to help each other, and you’ve very limited to do that publicly! Usually we have to publicly exchange emails or Skype IDs just to try to drive toward a private conversation. That seems like an unproductive process. Thank you for this insight!
  • Anonymous
    August 30, 2018
    Cool Idea Ed! But, a private messaging system has its own pros and cons! Its main advantage is easing the administration and collaboration! Its disadvantage is it can decrease the comments quantity of the article because some suggestions will move to the new system which finally can decrease the transparency!
    • Anonymous
      August 31, 2018
      Lots of great topics here, Saeid! First, the Docs platform used to have comments. They didn't like it, because you got random ideas, or lots of comments complained about a link or an out of date issue. So they fixed it, but then you still had to get through all those old comments to read the new ones... and all the old ones weren't even valid anymore. So they focused on solving that scenario and switched to a GitHub Issues system, where a comment really creates a GitHub issue. Then you can resolve those. So from that perspective, with that system in place, I don't think Private Messages create that negative scenario... because those style of comments wouldn't really exist. (You can still access the closed issues, but most people don't.) Also, you can still post the more transparent feedback/issues on Docs. Thoughts on that?You hit some other great points, but let's start with that topic. Thanks!
    • Anonymous
      August 31, 2018
      Hi Saeid.>> a private messaging system has its own pros and cons!You said "pros and cons" but you gave us only the pros (the advantages) :-)I am wondering if there are any real disadvantages. I pretty sure my answer is No, there are only advantages
      • Anonymous
        August 31, 2018
        Well I interpreted it that the cons are that more comments would go in PMs, which lessens the quantity of comments on articles. I agree with that, but with the Docs platform, they moved away from blog-like comments and moved toward a GitHub issues type of system instead. So the PMs wouldn't be replacing much.
        • Anonymous
          September 01, 2018
          The Docs platform is very good and I like the interface including the comments. The Docs platform is based on tGitHub, which make it sense to based the comments on GitHub solution as well, but what fit for the Docs platform which s official documentation dose not necessarily fit for the Wiki as community documents. For example in the Docs platform people might ask about the product, which is described, while in the wiki the comments should only focused on the article and not the product. A comment like "I think the article should include another section" fit as comment in the article, which a question like "how do write a query that..." does not fit as comment to the article even if the article is about T-SQL. For question about the product and "how to do" we should point them to the communities forums (MASD/TN), but in the Docs platform these might fit.* I always say that we should not get confused between official documentations and communities articles - these are two different types who should live one in the side of the other TOGETHER :-)
          • Anonymous
            September 01, 2018
            You are absolutely right Ronen! I just told my abstract idea, cause I still don't know the Doc system as a Wiki system!
          • Anonymous
            September 27, 2018
            You hit on a very good point. The truth is that Docs isn't a good platform for the comments about the product, either (even if that makes more sense for them there than on a Wiki article). That was part of the reason to move to the GitHub issues model for comments. They can easily close those as not being associated with the article (and send people to a forum to ask their questions). I find myself doing that sometimes with Wiki comments... sending people to forums where they can ask their questions.
        • Anonymous
          September 01, 2018
          Ed, This system somehow is like the SQLServerCentral.com system. Someone post an article but comments will be on a related forum discussion! This is not exactly the same, but there are similarities! ;-) I also like the idea about the issue tracking system! :-)
      • Anonymous
        September 01, 2018
        As Ed mentioned, I told that "Its disadvantage is it can ..."
  • Anonymous
    August 30, 2018
    It's a good idea, I really appreciate any new Ideas that add a real value to the community!Just one questions, Will it is like a chat room or just a personal message agent?Also, as per my humble experience in SharePoint.StackExchange (Moderator, 1st one in 2017, 4th one of all the time) In forum, I hope to care also about "Contributor to Contributor" by providing comments section below each question to ask the OP for some clarifications instead of doing that in the answers section, I think this is will make the forum more organized as well as more helpful!
    • Anonymous
      August 31, 2018
      "Will it is like a chat room or just a personal message agent?"Honestly, we're just discussing the needs. We wouldn't even know if we got one yet. But I think you're making a good point... what about a multi-person personal conversation? Is that what you're inquiring about? I think we all pictured a personal message agent, but if you look at what Yammer and Skype do... they allow you to include multiple people into a conversation, which creates a group chat. So in those cases, it's a really nice chatting environment. I could see that as being very valuable! Thanks, Mohamed!
    • Anonymous
      August 31, 2018
      "In forum, I hope to care also about “Contributor to Contributor” by providing comments section below each question to ask the OP for some clarifications instead of doing that in the answers section, I think this is will make the forum more organized as well as more helpful!"Currently we're chatting about community-based articles. But yes, I could see how the "Contributor to Contributor" PMs would still be very useful. Other contributors could help out, keeping each other accountable (before they become moderators or even if they want to help out but don't want to become moderators). Also, in your scenario for Forums (where the OP asks a question), I can see that as valuable. It seems like 99% of forum questions don't include enough information on the first post. =^)
    • Anonymous
      August 31, 2018
      >> Will it is like a chat room or just a personal message agent?A private message and a chat are two different types of communication channels. A private message are like forum in the sense that the message are waiting for you, while a chat is for live discussion (all participates are online at the same time). In most communities interfaces (at least the once I developed) these two features exists as (as explained above) these are fit for different cases.Today in the Wiki community we are using Facebook for messaging (which is external interface and does not cover the needs since we cannot make the relation between the users in the two different interfaces and not all users use both interfaces) and we use Skype for chat, which covers the needs of several internal groups (for example the TechNet Wiki Council) but does not cover a solution for all. Personally, I would like to see both communication channels in the Microsoft Website, but the personal messages is much much much... much more important.>> “Contributor to Contributor” by providing comments section below each question to ask the OP for some clarifications instead of doing that in the answers sectionThis is assuming that you have an "answers section" which is awful for discussion forums for example. In discussion forums we need to see all the information organizes as discussion tree, basically like the MSDN forums. The comment section in the Wiki is very poor and it is like a log of comment where you cannot know who respond to whom (like stackoverflow and other poor interfaces).I TOTALLY AGREE in this point.It could be awesome to have an hierarchy comments structure in the Wiki :-)
  • Anonymous
    August 30, 2018
    The comment has been removed
    • Anonymous
      August 31, 2018
      "For example, instead of posting their programming queries or technical questions to dedicated forums section, they will end up sending it as a personal message instead. Trust me, I’ve been in some technical communities for over 10 years now and that happens most of the time."This is a good insight. The Microsoft consumer Q&A forums have built out their PM system where only Moderators can initiate PMs. That prevents the scenario you're describing.Personally, I would still want Contributors to have the ability to send PMs. First, as in Mohamed's example/discussion, we are chatting about how Contributors can send messages to other contributors and walk them through the changes needed to improve their articles up to higher standards. Because Contributors can do this, they would be building experience for doing this (helping other Contributors improve) to eventually become a Moderator and can still help out this way even if they don't plan to become a Moderator. Second, I think there are many scenarios where we'd want Contributors to reach out to Moderators. For example, if they're wanting/willing to be interviewed for the blog, if they're wanting/willing to become Moderators or leaders in some other capacity, etc. I could post a blog talking about the Turkish community and ask for potential leaders to send me a PM. Then they can. It builds much more fluidity into the process of bringing up leadership in the community. But, at the same time, you have an excellent point. At the very least, I would author some default, "Go ask in a forum" text and ask the Moderators to paste that into their responses or to just ignore the technical inquiries (since it should be common sense that they'd post in a forum). I also get this a lot (in emails and work IMs). Typically my answer is to go ask in a technical forum or an equivalent (depending on the context). I think this becomes a way of life for many of us. At the most, it would be interesting to have a button you could click that automates the "Go ask in a forum" response to a personal message. That would be fun! =^)What other mitigations can you think of? Thanks, Vincent!
      • Anonymous
        September 01, 2018
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      • Anonymous
        September 01, 2018
        The comment has been removed
    • Anonymous
      August 31, 2018
      “(1) Have a private discussion board for Moderators and Admins wherein all can interact. This would be a great place to share ideas on how to enhance the system and moderation process for the community.”Okay. This is all sorts of funny and ironic, at the same time! First, we’ve already got this. As a group of Moderators, we’re already doing this right now. We’re even chatting about this very blog thread of comments. We’ve got chats about details of what’s in the comments, troubleshooting how to comment, etc. It’s really amazing and amusing. =^)In fact, I was a little astonished about how much we try to help each other… and I was just thinking, “Whoah. This is the best example of a community ever!” (Because I have other communities I’m helping build at Microsoft, so I’m trying to figure out how to get those communities to move toward what we have with this one.)And here is where the irony comes in! We were discussing why we might want personal messages… one of the reason is to invite contributors / community members (in this case, we call them Wiki Ninjas) to be interviewed for our Wiki Ninjas blog. Or the person could ask to be interviewed for the blog. So how do we do that now? Well, we do that publicly, because there’s no other way for us. And so the irony is that this is an invitation…Vincent, I’ve been a fan of your articles for awhile. I just read through them again, and your quality is amazing, as I’d expect from a 9-time MVP! Can we interview you for the blog? My email is edprice at Microsoft, and my Skype is live:edwardnprice. Thank you!
      • Anonymous
        September 01, 2018
        "So how do we do that now? Well, we do that publicly, because there’s no other way for us."Then a PM for Moderators/Admin to Contributor should be implemented. A link like "Send a Message" to a contributor profile will allow Moderators/Admin to message them but it will be sent out through the email address they used for registration."Vincent, I’ve been a fan of your articles for awhile. I just read through them again, and your quality is amazing, as I’d expect from a 9-time MVP! Can we interview you for the blog?"Thanks, Ed! I'm flattered. It's a pleasure hearing that. :) Actually @Ronen already sent out a template last week for me to answer some questions for the interview.
        • Anonymous
          September 27, 2018
          Fantastic! I'm looking forward to reading your interview!
    • Anonymous
      August 31, 2018
      The comment has been removed
      • Anonymous
        September 01, 2018
        That sounds perfect! This is a sort of "off-topic" but if I may add, could we request to add a page view count for each article published? This would really help determine an estimated view count during MVP nomination/renewal process.Thanks,Vinz
        • Anonymous
          September 16, 2018
          Vincent you could look into this wiki article as there is built-in option this is an alternative approach :)https://social.technet.microsoft.com/wiki/contents/articles/5885.wiki-how-to-track-your-wiki-article-page-views.aspx
        • Anonymous
          September 27, 2018
          Yes, I'm asking for something similar. Would you want the views count to be displayed publicly or in a private dashboard that lists your published articles?
  • Anonymous
    August 31, 2018
    Personal messages might be useful, but I think we should concentrate on getting the quality of the wiki editor, and the notifications service before anything else...
    • Anonymous
      August 31, 2018
      Good point, Paul. That's another fantastic topic! We really need to make sure we'd have a great editor. And then the notification experience would be great to dig into too! Thanks. Great insight. I really appreciate it.
  • Anonymous
    August 31, 2018
    I think it is only fair, plus is kind of expected. Any owner of a platform should themselves contact contributors on occasion. But also any moderators should be able to "set notifications". Which in turn are sent to contributors. Official company messages and a choice of fixed selection notifications for community mods would be best. Anything else could bring personal feelings and potential security risks to contributors, from unvetted/emotional/human community mods. The inability to reach out to contributors, even for the most basic reasons, has been a bind for us at TNWiki. Both as moderators and as evangelists wanting to invite and engage with new actives.Also, as I mentioned before. A landlord should make every reasonable effort to tell a tenant that they've been evicted, before they return to an empty house. Even if they're not there to pick up the mail.
    • Anonymous
      August 31, 2018
      "Official company messages and a choice of fixed selection notifications for community mods would be best."Wow! Your system sounds very efficient. =^)"Also, as I mentioned before. A landlord should make every reasonable effort to tell a tenant that they’ve been evicted, before they return to an empty house. Even if they’re not there to pick up the mail."I love this quote! I've used a similar illustration, maybe without realizing that you might have originated it. =^)I think the community should be able to lodge complaints to the landlord as well... like if their toilet needs to be fixed. This might mean there's a bug on the platform or the table feature of a new editor doesn't work like expected (for example). And then we become bad landlords if we're closed off and don't have an easy way for them to voice their needs, right? Thanks, Pete!
  • Anonymous
    August 31, 2018
    Indeed a great idea. In my view, personal message must be functionality. A message can be 1o1 or user to moderator. Some users would not comfortable on public platform in that case personal message would work for these users. On the other hands personal messages system comes with its own pros and cons. System/platform can be used to purely personal messages (not related to Blogs, posts or topics). But this feature can be very helpful for moderators to tell the users/authors about corrections or any other specific things.
    • Anonymous
      August 31, 2018
      Those are some great points, Gaurav!I think Pete Laker nailed it with his ideas of kind of various forms to send for various topics... to give some great default messaging so that we don't mess it up and we have a consistent voice. That would help with those cons that you mentioned. For example, if the topic gets too personal, then maybe the Moderator can close a thread or can reply with a default message to move the conversation into Skype (for example). Thanks again!
      • Anonymous
        August 31, 2018
        Yes, I agreed. Thanks Ed.
  • Anonymous
    September 01, 2018
    I have another question to ask! Is Wiki system will shut down? I mean that is Wiki process will be dead forever? Or it becomes a sub-domain of the Docs? If it will be part of the Docs, how will we post new articles? Are there any new guidelines?
    • Anonymous
      September 27, 2018
      The system is in progress. So nothing is set in stone. But the idea being discussed is that the new Docs Community would replace what TechNet Wiki does. We would want to manually migrate articles. That has advantages and disadvantages, discussed here: https://blogs.technet.microsoft.com/wikininjas/2018/08/24/council-spotlight-what-if-we-manually-migrated-the-articles/.The idea is that TechNet Wiki would be archived, meaning that you can't author and edit. That would be done on the new platform. If you want to author a new article, you would do it on the new community platform. If there are additional Wiki articles that you want to edit, but haven't been migrated to the new platform, then that's an excellent reason to migrate them.
  • Anonymous
    September 02, 2018
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  • Anonymous
    September 02, 2018
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    • Anonymous
      September 02, 2018
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      • Anonymous
        September 03, 2018
        Hmmm... Friend List is not a bad idea. I forgotten the fact that it is possible to narrow the Private Message functionality to user's Friend List just like Facebook/LinkedIn (Eg. Connections) as an option. @Ronen, I got your point on having Private Message for user to user so that it becomes a true community instead of a Q/A forum. And I think I can agreed with you on that aspect of having Private Message based on User's Friend List.
      • Anonymous
        September 27, 2018
        I agree with Ronen. I haven't seen PMs steal great conversations away from the community. Also, the person can simply ignore the question or reply and ask them to post it. That mentioned, I'd be fine not having contributor : contributor PMs. I think the biggest value is when a Moderator is involved.
  • Anonymous
    September 02, 2018
    It makes sense to keep this type of communication separate from comments and I would prefer if this was not in the form of an email but built into the system. I don't see any real negative of allowing for this communication and a great benefit to improve the quality of the contributions.I would prefer not to have a contributor to contributor channel (this to me should be a comment).
    • Anonymous
      September 02, 2018
      >> I would prefer not to have a contributor to contributor channelcontributor to contributor channel can be limited by the user like other interfaces. For example a user can allow only to his friend to contact him (yes there is a need in another feature which is "friends" to "groups" or "rules"). In general, There is no reason to block a service if all sides want it and it is already built-in and has no side-effect (like cost).Moderator to Contributor is a channel that the user should not be able to block, meaning that Moderator can send private messages to the user even if he is not in his friend list.
  • Anonymous
    September 03, 2018
    Firstly thank you for sharing this blog post Ed Price.In my opinion it will be more good as if we have the personal messages.In this way we Admin/Moderator and contributor can be more close.This will be exactly like the ticketing system where if contributor or Moderator has any difficulty they can contact privately also with admin.Some case many people will not like public comments and many people wont share what exactly they think in public comments ,If they have the personal messaging system that will be more helpful for them to share what they think and it can also lead to find the better solutions for the community also for the contributors /Moderators and for the Admin.What I would love to have means instead of personal messages we can transparent the messages to three layers.1) Admin can view all the Moderators and Contributors messages and responses.2) Moderators can view all the contributors level messages and responses.3) Contributors can view only their messages and responses.By this way we can make the system more secure also transparent for Admins and Moderator level peoples.
    • Anonymous
      September 27, 2018
      Well, it's important to have dialogues with our Wiki Ninja community about these topics, and this is a very community-friendly and open way to do that!Exactly! We need a ticketing system, and a PM system would provide that need.You have a very fun idea that would build a lot more transparency for Moderators and accountability for Contributors!
  • Anonymous
    September 16, 2018
    Ed, this is a good idea and I see that what benefit this will bring most all them are already discussed. So, I would to point out that a guideline on how the personal message option should be use also be needed. Like,> Not to send spam messages> Members are busy so it might be delay to give a reply so not to pokeetc. that specifies the purpose of PM.
    • Anonymous
      September 27, 2018
      That's a fantastic point, Sabah!We could have those messages in there by default, so everyone would see them when typing up the PM.And another message we'd want to have is to not try to replace forums with PMs... We would remind them to ask technical questions in the forums!