Bummer. Well, thanks for the supportive answer. At least I know I can take a peek if I need to. Also, I posted a notice so users are not surprised if their messages are monitored periodically for a safer environment. Check this out.

http://www.shorthandclasses.com/communit...70bd4c92#Post70

Please let me know if I have misinformed them or could say it better another way. I really think it's best the users KNOW this will take place than continue to think it's really private to the owner and admins.

1. whack that total down to 50
2. Why mention that your monitoring them?

You probably wont, as there will be that much going on.

Start posting things like monitoring pm's if and when it becomes a problem.

Normally its the few spoiling it for the many.

Personally i respect that a private message is a private message,
and wait for a member to post the contents of any abuse.

If you must post that, then add it in your forum rules,
and then if they step out of line, there banned the reason is in the forum rules

You don't have another way of ensuring that they have read your rules unless its in the forum rules.

Thanks Mark. Yep, this posting can only be viewed in the "Board Rules" forum. I didn't think about users violating posted Board Rules" for all forums. I guess because I'm still typing them all out! It takes a lot of sit-down time to type out a variety of forum training helps for all who register. Wish we had a manual already. Don't get me wrong...I AM thankful for the FAQ question/answer link.

Okay, I appreciate the suggestion to lower the PM total from 150-200 to 50. And I'll do that pretty quick.

As far as mentioning users being monitored, I think you're probably right. So instead, I could post a statement that PMs CAN be monitored upon a member's notification (to the admin) of another suspected user's content abuse.

Is this better?

Sounds much better that way... I mean, if an abuse claim comes up you do *have* to check it out afterall ;)...

And yeh, if you worry about space, keeping th emax # of pm's low is a godsend...

Not to mention if you setup ADMIN logging you can see a list of what the admins have been doing including loginas "another user name here"

There is no getting around it and you can nail people doing this kind of stuff immediately.

if you want to review the latest PMs in phpMyAdmin, just paste this:



into a query (where ubbt_ is replaced by your board's prefix, limit 50 can be changed too) window. this will display the most recent xx (50 for this example) PM replies (messages).

you could even save this in your Cpanel, DB tools, queries stuff, but then ALL admins have the ability to use it.

just an fyi

we really do need an Advanced SQL Forum (Admin Section)
for these Advanced queries, which can be so helpful.
As fixes and repairs too.

Thanks Sir Dude as i bow

agree, to an extent. i actually filter out the queries in the admin panel, before letting them execute.

ie: no update, delete, select into, alter bla bla stuff.

but the select queries can be real helpful. eg: select all the themes and rank them by popularity and generate a list that can be included between [ list ] tags in a post, to allow the users to see what's both available and popular and the links automatically click to a preview of said style.

that saves me tons of time and users like to see where their favorite style is in the standings etc, but the admins (without that) are too arsed to keep updating the list manually.

oh and i bow back to you