Regarding the recent private messages announcement

[TheStigUSA]

Firstly, let's keep this discussion civil.

I wanted to start a thread about some thoughts I have about the recent announcement that I feel may resonate with others.

First is the naming of this feature "private messages". Although someone like Chuck or myself who have backgrounds in computer science understand this kind of system affords a façade of privacy, since the developers can read everything, the vast majority of your community will not understand this unless specifically told, and will think the 'private' in 'private message' will afford them some privacy. Furthermore, many will never read that info, just human nature, so they'll make a reasonable conclusion based on the name of the feature.

With this announcement, we can see clearly the developers are choosing to read people's private messages and channel chats. While it is their system, so technically they have that right, in this case, the information about "private" messages and what's actually private needs to be made far more clear to players, so that they understand perceived private conversations are actually being read by a third party, and are being read in a way that doesn't appear neutral.

Perhaps the best move is to change the name to 'direct message' along with documentation updates to reflect the lack of privacy included in such communication.

Again, keep it civil but this may bring a good discussion.

[◄Chuck►]

I see there is a little misunderstanding.

Nothing will actually change, it's merely meant as a reminder that the rules also apply for things not seen in the global chat.

None of our admins is going and snoop through all the stuff written in private, in fact nobody really wants to, but we have the option (and that was never any different) to lookup certain situations in the logs, in case someone reported someone misbehaving, e.g. for insults.

We don't care the slightest what you say and how you say it as long nobody gets directly offended. E.g. by driving up to someone and going like "!l you dumb a**hole" or delivering such a message via !pm.

The channel chats are a little different, as you have a constant changing audience as people can freely join and leave, so whenever you say something stupid, you have no real knowledge how many people will effectively see that message.
So, unless you know exactly who you are really talking to, it's much advised to act like you were talking in the global chat.

I hope that clears it up