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!
Note: there was a bug (which should be fixed) which was blanking out the messages that had already been sent before this change was made. Those messages should be visible again :)
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.
I didn't state that - I said "at most" 5 to emphasize how few it's been. I can only think of one at the moment - it was a different schedule style back before the mastery schedules became as powerful as they are now. It was fairly limited in functionality, and had a lot of negatives that couldn't be overcome, so I opted to stick with a single schedule type over maintaining the two.
Removing features from smaller projects is one thing, but making risk-based decisions for something that financially supports your family is *completely different*.
