I dont think there is currently a way to delete pm's in your pm box.

Can we have one? I want to clear these 2 pages of old old old pms in my pm box.

sorry if this is the wrong section was not sure where to post this request at. I just really wish there was a way to delete pms in my pm box, if there is i dont know of it

Currently, there's no way to delete any PM's or comments. For comments, you can hide them but PM's are stuck there for now. If you REALLY want a delete button, I suggest a PM request to a admin.

We can't delete PMs any more than you guys can (though I'll add a way of hiding PMs like you can hide comments at some point), so PMing an admin won't do any good.

tony311 said:
We can't delete PMs any more than you guys can (though I'll add a way of hiding PMs like you can hide comments at some point), so PMing an admin won't do any good.

Oh, okay

tony311 said:
We can't delete PMs any more than you guys can (though I'll add a way of hiding PMs like you can hide comments at some point)

We should be able to....I mean what kind of site doesn't have a way to delete private messages from years ago? It's honestly just a waste of memory :/

Also why all this "hide" shit? Why not just have a simple delete function? I can understand from comments from people posting dumb troll responses deleting it ect....but in pms one just wants to get troll shit or old old messages out of his/her pm box. Forget the "hide this pm idea" and just give us a delete this pm option. It makes the most sense...

I am just guessing on this because I don't know, but I'm guessing that it's going to be stored anyway, for various reasons, and so "deleting" it not would not save any space (and I'm guessing that since it's only like plain text it would be so trivial) and so hiding it from you would function similarly and with less work.

Conker said:
Also why all this "hide" shit? Why not just have a simple delete function? I can understand from comments from people posting dumb troll responses deleting it ect....but in pms one just wants to get troll shit or old old messages out of his/her pm box. Forget the "hide this pm idea" and just give us a delete this pm option. It makes the most sense...

No.

Aurali said:
No.

Just a wild guess, is it because the mail system is kinda like bank? You put a message in there, specify the people who are allowed to see it and then the nice, little lady at the counter takes it out of her safe and shows it to the people who are allowed to see it?

If so, how about making the hide function flag that message, the message then could be deleted if both parties flagged it and thus no longer want it.
Maybe with a grace period of some sorts, probably two weeks to allow for the fixing of accidental hiding.

Every other approach would probably require a complete rewrite of the code.

NotMeNotYou said:

Every other approach would probably require a complete rewrite of the code.

it's more along the lines of accountability. if we are gonna be able to help users, we need to see what's going on. reason why everything is hidden. not deleted. accountability.

Conker said:
We should be able to....I mean what kind of site doesn't have a way to delete private messages from years ago? It's honestly just a waste of memory :/

Also why all this "hide" shit? Why not just have a simple delete function? I can understand from comments from people posting dumb troll responses deleting it ect....but in pms one just wants to get troll shit or old old messages out of his/her pm box. Forget the "hide this pm idea" and just give us a delete this pm option. It makes the most sense...

1. Not memory, storage.
2. When storing in text you use 1 byte per character(2 for unicode) so a 1000 character PM would only take 1KB, and that's assuming no compression.

Aurali said:
it's more along the lines of accountability. if we are gonna be able to help users, we need to see what's going on. reason why everything is hidden. not deleted. accountability.

Oh yes because spying on private messages from 2 years ago really 'helps' the users....are you serious? Not even pms are hidden they cant be deleted and the list just gets longer.

We should have the option to delete pms...heck even sites from the 90's had that option yet its 2012 yet we still dont? wtf

Conker said:
Oh yes because spying on private messages from 2 years ago really 'helps' the users....are you serious? Not even pms are hidden they cant be deleted and the list just gets longer.

Length of the actual, un-hidden PM history is a problem for the admins. If it's privacy you're concerned about, then about all I can offer you is that this is *not* a private service, you don't get any legal expectation of privacy here, blah blah blah. They aren't even called PMs, as if to imply "private messages". They're simply called Mail, and used to be called DMail back when the site's code was closer to the original booru fork.

If you really don't like that the admins have the power to look at your Mail messages, you can always find a similar service where the admins operate in better accordance with your paranoia. I don't exactly know how that would seriously work, but I'm sure someone out there who lives "off the grid" can share their 8-gigabit sneakernet n-way crypto scheme that can still be circumvented by one callous fellow with a 5 dollar wrench.

Conker said:
We should have the option to delete pms...heck even sites from the 90's had that option yet its 2012 yet we still dont? wtf

Also, if you really think anything you have ever posted to Facebook has ever been deleted, you are fucking kidding yourself.

But I have no objection to the admins implementing a "hide" feature but labeling it "delete", a la Facebook, Xbox Live, Twitter, Yahoo, Google Plus, and so many other websites who are hip to the trends of the 21st century.

Edit: My "hip to the trends of the 21st century" was in no way intended to imply that e621 was anything less than spectacular at what it does. It really is the best site of its kind, with a community that does an awesome job at taking the site's mission seriously, and with some awesome admins as well.

Would you really be better off if the feature was labeled delete? It would be the same feature, just less honest about what it's doing.

True, it's the same kind of lying that several other high-profile websites do.

I suppose it comes down to two questions:
"Which word provides a better user experience (assuming it matters)?"
"Is it worth lying to the users about the nature of the function?"

Several high profile websites (as from above) have answered those questions with "Delete" and "Yes".

Myself, I don't care whether stuff is actually deleted versus hidden. But I could see where someone would have a greater stake in the argument. Maybe they've done a great deal of sexual roleplay via e621's Mail system. Maybe someone's divulged their real-world identity to someone else via Mail. Maybe someone otherwise used the Mail system to carry sensitive information. I have done none of these, because I trust the personalities I meet on the internet about as far as I could carry the Taj Mahal.

I also believe there are legitimate reasons to preserve a person's Mail history, so the administration can determine a pattern of behavior in response to complaints or observing bad behavior. At which point the question becomes "how long do we preserve a person's Mail?" But I think the question of "how long" is irrelevant once you decide that the answer is not "zero".

I was going to say basically everything that ikdind has said above.

Also, for what it's worth, it is not possible for us to selectively target a specific user's messages. Admins can only see messages that they're directly linked to; there is no feature on the site allowing an admin to look through all of the messages to/from a specific user. This is completely intentional, to help avoid incidents of "spying" like Conker mentioned.

I have 46 pages of mail. I don't even think about the way I accumulate it anymore and you never know, maybe I might need to look back on one some day.

Also while we are on the subject, it would be kinda handy to have a mail link under the users section of the static page; there seems to be everything but that there anyway.

Char said:
I was going to say basically everything that ikdind has said above.

Also, for what it's worth, it is not possible for us to selectively target a specific user's messages. Admins can only see messages that they're directly linked to; there is no feature on the site allowing an admin to look through all of the messages to/from a specific user. This is completely intentional, to help avoid incidents of "spying" like Conker mentioned.

ikdind can go rage on his keybaord more, all what he said had nothing to do with my point.

I dont care if its a delete or just hides the pm....i juts want to clear my pm box up so i dont have to see all these old messages.

i see no reason why this site doesnt have this yet

Conker said:
ikdind can go rage on his keybaord more, all what he said had nothing to do with my point.

I dont care if its a delete or just hides the pm....i juts want to clear my pm box up so i dont have to see all these old messages.

i see no reason why this site doesnt have this yet

Why are you mad at this? Do you have any kind of obsession to have things empty or clear? Are you perfectionist or something?

Would you be... uh... less angry if the pm box had "Read" and "Unread" categories?

Conker said:
ikdind can go rage on his keybaord more, all what he said had nothing to do with my point.

We all have our bad days. Even on my good days, though, I'm not exactly concise, in case that played a role in making me look worse than I meant.

You seemed genuinely offended by the notion of hiding Mail messages, quite the opposite of "I dont care if its a delete or just hides the pm."

I guess it's a case of "Hello, Pot. My name's Kettle." And we're all looking forward to seeing the feature sometime in the future?

ikdind said:
We all have our bad days. Even on my good days, though, I'm not exactly concise, in case that played a role in making me look worse than I meant.

You seemed genuinely offended by the notion of hiding Mail messages, quite the opposite of "I dont care if its a delete or just hides the pm."

I guess it's a case of "Hello, Pot. My name's Kettle." And we're all looking forward to seeing the feature sometime in the future?

Well if everyone is looking for this feature someone has to bring it up that we should have this feature. I dont care if its really gone or another category but we should have it. If im the first one to make a thread about this and others remained quiet then yay me :3

Xch3l said:
Why are you mad at this? Do you have any kind of obsession to have things empty or clear? Are you perfectionist or something?

Would you be... uh... less angry if the pm box had "Read" and "Unread" categories?

not trolling, serious questions

Not mad at all actually just still wondering why this site does not have anything for its old pms yet, anyway on to the rest of your comment.

I'm no perfectionist or anything, I know we cant be perfect.....but I just wanted a feature that either deletes or hides the pms or maybe another catgory for it. As when chekcing pms I'm just tired of seeing 2 year old pms ands being remidned of other stuff.

Now as oyu for question, If the read and unread made them go into another section like "new mail" "old mail" then yeah that would be good. I just honestly dont wish to view these pms any longer in my pm box, deleted, hidden, different category for read messages/......pick whichever one and i'll be happy with it.