掲示板 Forums - Removal of DM ability (August 2024)

This was mentioned in July's news report, but sending direct messages between users (except with me, renshuu's admin) is no longer allowed.

As to why, I checked the data and noted that well under 1% of users were sending direct messages to other users.

At the same time, renshuu continues to grow in size, and as renshuu's only administrator (now and in the future), I am unable to devote time to making sure communications between users in private remain safe. It would take significant time and resources to passively monitor discussions between users, and renshuu is not equipped to handle support for users IF something inappropriate/dangerous were to happen.

For these two reasons, I felt it was safest and most reasonable to remove the DM ability.

I have run renshuu for over 20 years, and I've probably removed functionality MAYBE 5 times in all those years. So I do take functionality removal very seriously.

Thanks again for your support, and for using renshuu!

Very sad. There exist(ed) an opt-out.

renshuu has fallen. billions must migrate to Duolingo Forums

RIP to a real one; DMs will (probably not) be missed.

On a serious note, I understand both sides of this argument. While DMs offered a way for us to communicate with each other personally, the personal nature of it would almost certainly lead to at least one instance of someone calling someone else a slur; that's a given risk with any private messaging feature.

Also, I understand why you'd remove a severely underutilized feature. I've purged unused features from my own projects on a frequent basis (although I usually find a use for the now-deleted function and have to cobble it back together).

I personally disagree with the change; I think DMs were fine as they were, but I see how attempting to moderate them to make them safe would be at best annoying as all hell. But I haven't ran a million-user language-learning platform for 20 years (I haven't even been alive that long) and I also only have my own anecdotes and the statistics you've given.

-クラウディア

EDIT: You state that you've removed a total of five features (and I'm assuming this includes DMs). What were the other four (or five if my assumption is wrong)?

EDIT 2: *At most five. I read it. I was just lazy because writing on a phone with my sausage fingers blows.

Ah. Thanks for that information. And sorry for misrepresenting your post; I just don't like typing on a phone like I have been recently.

-クラウディア

Well, let's try to think of it like this: how does one "get" a whole lot of admins and the money to pay them each month? If they just do it as volunteers, without any pay or contract, what are the consequences if something bad happens in chat? The app owner can't just say "I don't know, I asked some guy on the internet to moderate the chat, if they didn't do it, I'm not responsible for what happened".

As for the idea about coding so the chat automatically rejects bad words, the problem, sadly, is this: people can do a lot of harm without using a single x-rated or "c_ss" word.