I was working on bmail deletion last night (yay!) and came across an edge case that I wasn't sure what the best way to deal with was. Suppose player A sends a bmail to player B and then there's a few back-and-forths. Then, player A deletes the bmail. The bmail will still be in player B's inbox. The edge case: what if player B now tries to reply to the bmail? Some potential options:
- When player A deletes the bmail, also delete it from player B's inbox - I don't think this is really an option because it allows player A to delete player B's mail.
- Undelete the bmail from player A's inbox if player B replies - This might be kind of weird/unexpected for a bmail to be able to resurface itself.
- Undelete the bmail from player A's inbox if player B replies, but when player A is looking at it, only show messages from after the time of deletion - This gets around the problem with the previous option, but it's kind of weird that player B will have the full context of the bmail, while player A will only have partial context. If two people are looking at the same bmail, it should probably contain the same messages.
- Don't allow player B to reply to the deleted bmail - This is looking like the most sane and easy-to-explain approach, but I'm wondering if it could be annoying for player B. They're always free to send a new bmail of course.
Thoughts? I'm leaning towards the last option unless anyone can present some better alternative.
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You could let Player B reply to the deleted mail, but it just shows as a new bmail for Player A. Gets added onto the old thread for Player B.
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have it so that player a deletes then if player b messages it recalls convo for player a :) seems logical
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(sidestep: I dont think deletion is that important/interesting. I'd rather see a search, or a 'view all mail from this player' :)
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Have to disagree Jans, it would be boring/not necessary if bot trading/buying/selling didn't exist. I've sold bots in the past and seen people reading through all my bmails, which should be private really.
Another problem is what is inside the bmails. Lyrad owns a ton of win dumpers that he lets me have access to. If anyone ever buys this bot, hehas to change the passwords of like 100 bots. Would be good to be able to avoid that. Not just those either, the passwords to many of Benny's/Esv/Rene/Myriads dumpers, Esv's ratio whores etc are all stored in my mailbox.
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I'm not saying it's useless, but personally, i've never wanted to delete a bmail, while there have been multiple occasions i wished there had been a search or filter.
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(if this is mostly for trading purposes, a 'clear inbox' link in settings would probably be the most effective)
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I like third option. Player A deletes. Player B can still see it, but cant reply. Then player B can delete it.
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Agreed with what Jans said. A clear all would be nice. Apart from selling a bot I don't see any reason to delete bmails.
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^ why wouldn't you wanna delete b-mails gpof? :P
cant you just make it so Player A deletes mail and then if player B decides to reply it comes up as a new message?, but player B still has all the previous messages where as Player A doesn't because he has deleted them.
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That's what Fish suggested as well, and I like that idea.
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Is there a reason why this isn't being treated like normal e-mail? If it's deleted from Player A and Player B replays, player A would just get a quoted version of the previous conversation. Or is there no pretty way of doing that?
Depending on length of the convo though they could have a very long page.
I'm for player A just having what was sent back from player B and the convo continuing from there for player A.
Having the clear inbox would still be saving the convo on both players IDs on the server thus taking up double the space (if that is how saving bmails works).
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I would prefer that the full message was recalled for player A.
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There really isn't a reason for deletion if the bmails are still there....
Deletion is to clean up disk space.
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The fourth option does look the most appealing. Then player B could chose on their own whether to save it or delete it as well.
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Is there a reason why this isn't being treated like normal e-mail? If it's deleted from Player A and Player B replays, player A would just get a quoted version of the previous conversation.
^this
Also, if I were to use this option it would be to delete previous mails in a convo, so that I'm just left with the final version with the whole conversation.
Also I support Jans, inbox search & marking mails as useful/important would be more useful.
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Is there a reason why this isn't being treated like normal e-mail? If it's deleted from Player A and Player B replays, player A would just get a quoted version of the previous conversation.
I think the reason is because bmail seems to work like a private forum, where each player owns his own messages/replies. In email, the same text keeps being sent back and forth, so it includes the whole conversation.
Undelete the bmail from player A's inbox if player B replies - This might be kind of weird/unexpected for a bmail to be able to resurface itself.
This is wat basically happens with email too though. If i delete a message, and the recipient replies to me, i get his reply + my original text back in my inbox. Nothing weird or unexpected about that?
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Some quick replies to everyone:
You could let Player B reply to the deleted mail, but it just shows as a new bmail for Player A. Gets added onto the old thread for Player B.
Sounds like option 3.
have it so that player a deletes then if player b messages it recalls convo for player a :) seems logical
Sounds like option 2.
(sidestep: I dont think deletion is that important/interesting. I'd rather see a search, or a 'view all mail from this player' :)
It's actually only a ~night's worth of work and it serves two main important purposes:
- People occasionally contact me asking me to redact certain bits of information (e.g. passwords) from bmails.
- Naughty spammers like to "bmail bomb" people which usually results in my having to do a lot of annoying manual database cleanup work. Bmail deletion enables players to deal with this themselves.
I agree that a "show all from player X" feature would be useful, though generic search is more difficult. This was brought up recently.
(if this is mostly for trading purposes, a 'clear inbox' link in settings would probably be the most effective)
Agreed with what Jans said. A clear all would be nice. Apart from selling a bot I don't see any reason to delete bmails.
Without getting into whether there should or shouldn't be a "clear all" button, the original problem I posed would still remain either way.
I like third option. Player A deletes. Player B can still see it, but cant reply. Then player B can delete it.
Option 4*, not 3.
cant you just make it so Player A deletes mail and then if player B decides to reply it comes up as a new message?, but player B still has all the previous messages where as Player A doesn't because he has deleted them.
Yes, that's option 3.
Is there a reason why this isn't being treated like normal e-mail? If it's deleted from Player A and Player B replays, player A would just get a quoted version of the previous conversation. Or is there no pretty way of doing that?
That's an interesting way of looking at option 2 where the deleted bmail gets resurfaced if replied to. Quoted emails certainly behave similarly, though I suppose with those, you have the option of removing the quoted history; with bmails you would not.
Having the clear inbox would still be saving the convo on both players IDs on the server thus taking up double the space (if that is how saving bmails works).
Only one copy of bmails is saved.
There really isn't a reason for deletion if the bmails are still there....
Deletion is to clean up disk space.
Saving disk space actually isn't a motivation for this feature. Deletes will be logical, not physical, at least for the initial implementation. Some sort of garbage collection will likely be added later on, but for now everything will still live.
marking mails as useful/important
I hadn't considered "starred" bmails; that sounds useful.
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And now an additional thought: I hadn't considered how multi-player bmails would fit in with all this. This is something I'd like to eventually implement and I think option 4 (not allowing replies when someone has deleted the bmail) conflicts with that feature. With enough recipients, bmails would get locked down pretty quickly.
That leaves options 2 and 3: allowing replies, but either surfacing or not surfacing the deleted bmails for the player that deleted. The email analogy seems reasonable in that a deleted email can still sort of (not fully because you don't have all the original metadata) reappear if it comes back quoted. I'll have to think on this some more...
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How is that much different than posting on the clan forum?
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I feel as if people read their bmail first. More personal, etc.
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It would be great actually, to be able to send message to a selection of people. Just the other day i had to send 5 separate messages to leaders of the clan.
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or better yet, an out of topic suggestion, implement the "leader's forum" just like in bots2. a clan-wide or multi-bmail wont be that necessary anymore i think.
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I think its better when player A deletes the bmail, it will just lock up the bmail from player B's inbox. player B can still read their discussions but cant reply to it. if he wants to reply, he just needs to send a new bmail.
and about multi-player bmails, it would be better if they're just locked after sending. this will just be some kinda like an announcement that doesn't need replies. if they needed replies, they just have to post it in their clan forum or bmail it personally. so deleting such mails wouldn't be a problem anymore. but for this to happen without conflicts, a new field must be recorded in the database which will tell if the mail is multi or a single mail. there are single mails on a number of people with the same title and message that needed replies, they might be conflicted with the auto-locking of the multi-player bmails.
dunno really. im not even sure what im saying, they're just my thoughts now!:) lol
[khael]
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I didn't have clan-wide messages in mind when I said multi-player bmails, for what it's worth. I can think of many use cases outside of clan-wide and leader-wide discussions that would benefit from replies. That's a totally separate discussion from what this thread is about though.
I really don't think option 4 works at this point in light of multi-player bmail. Any thoughts on options 2 and 3?
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Option 2 makes the most sense to me, as it is basically the same with email.
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personally i would hate the zombification of bmails that option 2 could lead to. if i decided to delete a bmail i would very much like it to stay dead. on the other hand there is a problem, as already stated, with the inconsistencies in option 3.
what i would suggest is instead that when player A delete the bmail, player B would still be able to access it on his end, but when he replies to it a new one is created, so that the content is consistent for both sender and receiver. optionally you could quote in the latest message from the old bmail.
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What mith said - would it be hard to create a new chain for both players if one deletes the old email?
I would like to see the ability to delete bmails if nothing else when I buy a bot I don't want to have to look at 6-10 pages of crap they've said.
As for multiple people bot mails - please please put this feature in. There are many times I'd like to have a three or four person discussion that is simply impossible to do unless you use mIRC or another chat service.
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Bump. Did things progress anywhere on this ender?
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Not really. It kind of got sidelined for more interesting projects that were clear wins like tournaments (and things leading up to tournaments like the NC removal) because I hadn't decided on a satisfying solution to this edge case.
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Perhaps just have one thread possible per bot instead of multiples and have it working on an individual post type system where I could message you something and only I could delete it from my end until x amount of time has passed where either person would then be able to delete it.
Would work just fine with the current system as well, where the original message creator has permission to delete it for the first week or so and then the recipient will then have the ability to delete the message/thread of messages themselves.
Deletions should be universal though. If I delete a message I sent, the recipient's message would also disappear.
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Or
Not a universal delete but have the reply greyed out much like a locked forum thread.
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Necrothread time. I still don't have a good sense of how to handle the multi-bot bmail case, but ignoring that, option 4 seems like the clear answer to me. Funny how a couple years away from a problem can bring clarity. We can cross the multi-bot bmail bridge if/when we get to it.
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