New Messaging System Coming Soon

Quote by Georgia_27_8

Quote by lynnwitt

- All of your messages to another member will be combined into a single message.

Not being one of the cool kids and therefore not using any of the applications mentioned, I just cannot fathom how this is a good idea. Several above have noted this as well. Yes, I'm old fashioned, but I like things grouped by subject more than sender. Maybe (quite possibly) I don't understand something about this combining of messages, but it just seems on the surface that it will be rather difficult to manage.

Along with others, I lamented the loss of folders, and this seems the next step in obfuscation.

L

Hey

Your messages are not grouped by subject, even now.

Messages are currently set in chronological order (unless there is a trick i have missed).

For the technophobes:

I find it hard to believe that so many "clients over 50 whom do-not use any other platforms" are on Lush but do not, or have never used one or a combination of;

Whatsapp, I-message, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, BlackBerry Messenger, or even standard SMS messages which have been around for literally decades.

That is without the likes of MSN, Yahoo or AOL messengers which dominated the first decade of the 2000's.

I see that many people on Lush also request to move to "Hangouts", even that uses a similar platform to the new Lush messenger when you get to the basics.

The majority of the most successul messaging platforms in the world are currently using a version similar to that which is proposed and Lush are soon adopting.

My parents are nearing their 60's, they are in the same age bracket as these clients and currently use/have used most, if not all of the examples which I have mentioned above.

My Nanny Tilly is 81 yearls old and uses Facebook and Whatsapp almost each day to message us.

When people are not told about an update, they are livid (I know was when Lush initially changed).

Now that people are told about an update - well in advance, people manufacture issues, assume that the owners, admin and developers haven't thought about potential transitional issues.

There is just no pleasing some people.

The real problem here though is that people do not like being told what is happening, they believe that they should have a say in the matter, largely without a technological background of the current or proposed system.

You might be surprised how many people on here have backgrounds in software development, programming, testing and other things to do with technology. And as someone that wrote functional specs and worked with users when developing new software or updates, it is most certainly imperative to get user input and feedback, as they are the ones using the system. What is the point of having software that the users don't like or that doesn't meet their needs?

I have noticed extremely long Lushmail threads are missing messages at the start. I have 3 Lushmail from one friend that has many messages going between the two of us. The first is missing many from the start of our messaging each other, from the 3rd of Jan to the 8th of Jan. The second is missing messages at the start of the thread also, from the 2nd of Feb to the 10th of Feb.

I am wondering :-

• if this is the case for other members

• if this is a known issue

• will the missing messages be returned

Any help in this matter will be greatly appreciated, Thankyou.

Quote by AngelWorthy

I have noticed extremely long Lushmail threads are missing messages at the start. I have 3 Lushmail from one friend that has many messages going between the two of us. The first is missing many from the start of our messaging each other, from the 3rd of Jan to the 8th of Jan. The second is missing messages at the start of the thread also, from the 2nd of Feb to the 10th of Feb.

I am wondering :-

• if this is the case for other members

• if this is a known issue

• will the missing messages be returned

Any help in this matter will be greatly appreciated, Thankyou.

I had a message thread on this topic a few nights ago. With each response, the oldest comment was deleted. All I have left is the last ten exchanges. Messages are being treated, apparently, as transitory, which may befit a hook-up site, but not one supposedly devoted to writers and stories where words are written to last.

I need a pickle.

Quote by kistinspencil

Quote by AngelWorthy

I have noticed extremely long Lushmail threads are missing messages at the start. I have 3 Lushmail from one friend that has many messages going between the two of us. The first is missing many from the start of our messaging each other, from the 3rd of Jan to the 8th of Jan. The second is missing messages at the start of the thread also, from the 2nd of Feb to the 10th of Feb.

I am wondering :-

• if this is the case for other members

• if this is a known issue

• will the missing messages be returned

Any help in this matter will be greatly appreciated, Thankyou.

I had a message thread on this topic a few nights ago. With each response, the oldest comment was deleted. All I have left is the last ten exchanges. Messages are being treated, apparently, as transitory, which may befit a hook-up site, but not one supposedly devoted to writers and stories where words are written to last.

I need a pickle.

Ohhhh. Now I am extra, extra sad on top of my already sad sadness. :( :( :(

I was in the process, before the upgrade, of copying, saving then deleting all my Lushmail. I hadn't copied & saved the ones mentioned because the newer messages were within the last 5 weeks & didn't have the date & timestamp on each message. My OCD needs the date & timestamp. (I know the timestamp was not my actual time zone, but at least it shows me how much time between messages.) In this new system it only shows the date, no time. Again more sadness over this upgrade.

Quote by AngelWorthy

I have noticed extremely long Lushmail threads are missing messages at the start. I have 3 Lushmail from one friend that has many messages going between the two of us. The first is missing many from the start of our messaging each other, from the 3rd of Jan to the 8th of Jan. The second is missing messages at the start of the thread also, from the 2nd of Feb to the 10th of Feb.

I am wondering :-

• if this is the case for other members

• if this is a known issue

• will the missing messages be returned

Any help in this matter will be greatly appreciated, Thankyou.

Same here. Try logging a problem report. You may find the response is that it is not a bug, it's a feature.

Quote by dlcalguy

Quote by AngelWorthy

I have noticed extremely long Lushmail threads are missing messages at the start. I have 3 Lushmail from one friend that has many messages going between the two of us. The first is missing many from the start of our messaging each other, from the 3rd of Jan to the 8th of Jan. The second is missing messages at the start of the thread also, from the 2nd of Feb to the 10th of Feb.

I am wondering :-

• if this is the case for other members

• if this is a known issue

• will the missing messages be returned

Any help in this matter will be greatly appreciated, Thankyou.

Same here. Try logging a problem report. You may find the response is that it is not a bug, it's a feature.

I am not happy with this new feature. I have just noticed in an active message thread only 40 messages can be seen. They delete at the top as each new message is added at the bottom. This is no good for co-authors who are chatting about a story they are writing. No history is kept, to refer back to later. I don't want to have to copy & save messages as I go, so as to refer back to later. This new system defeats the whole purpose, in my opinion, of communicating with others.

**EDIT**

I thought starring messages was to save messages. I just tried that in the message thread I mentioned above. Added more to the conversation. The messages at the top of the thread have now disappeared, even though I had starred them. No more messages before 1 hour ago, even though that thread was started days ago. So very sad to learn that my messages are disappearing, never to be seen again. 😢

spunkymonkey707: We haven't changed anything recently with the way groups are loaded. We load 10 posts per page with more loaded on scroll. I can see there are some very large posts on the linked group with single images being >6MB, however initial load was 24MB which is obviously a lot, but it is a group full of externally linked images.

AngelWorthy: It sounds like there maybe a loading issue. I'm assuming you are seeing older messages disappear as new messages are added only after refreshing the page? There is no on page cut off currently. Your messages have not been deleted if they were sent within the last 60 days or were starred. I will try and recreate the issue, are you on desktop or mobile? And are you using the messages drop down or the messages page?

UPDATE: I can confirm there is an issue with loading older messages, we are working on a fix. These messages still exist they are just not being displayed at the moment.

I'm seeing the same as AngelWorthy. Doesn't matter if on mobile or desktop.

STR

1. Click avatar->Mailbox OR envelope.

2. Pick a person with an active conversation that was started after the switchover to the new message system.

3. Scroll up.

Expected result

Lazy load messages in batches, in reverse time order, all the way back.

Actual result

A handful of messages are shown (maybe 30?) from the last few minutes/hours/days depending on frequency of interaction. Scrolling stops at the top with "Messages older than 2 months will be removed unless you star them."

Side note

a. Searching for messages sometimes reveals older messages but clicking them doesn't load the conversation around that point to see the results in context.

b. If you search for something and then amend your search term without clicking 'x' first "Sorry, there was an error" is often shown.

c. There's no indication that the search is actually _doing_ anything. User feedback would be handy in terms of an animation or something.

Further, do I understand that messages are ditched after 60 days? If so, why? (besides the obvious disk space saving).

Does this mean if I want to keep a conversation about a collaboration that spans 6 months or more - because these things often take time as real life work schedules interfere - that I needs to either star every single message as they are added to the conversation, or copy and paste them out periodically into an external text editor?

The messages are removed for the exact reason that you've said, for disk space reasons. What we don't want to do is allow the dataset to spiral out of control because it becomes a problem to maintain.

To keep specific messages, you would need to star them.

We're happy to review whether 60 days is long enough. Is it typical that you would need to keep every message say over 6 months or just specific ones that are important?

re:

danadmin

spunkymonkey707: We haven't changed anything recently with the way groups are loaded. We load 10 posts per page with more loaded on scroll.

Mmmm that's strange, on my PC it appeared to be loading loads of posts. I'll try checking again.

Any chance we could have similar GUI options to change bold, italic, underline, and other tools ect. in Groups and Messenger like we have available here in Forums?

Managing disk space usage is fine, and necessary. What often happens is we'll chat back and forth about a story, float ideas, decide on a direction or some plot points, go away write a bit for a month or so, then come back and chat some more to compare notes, add more to the story, swap revisions, return here to chat some more, etc. At various stages I'll refer to the early parts of the conversation as there might be something great we said that would be wonderful to include as the project progressed. If that is lost, it's tough to remember what was said 4 or 5 months prior.

Having to star each individual message as it comes in, and star each reply is a bit cumbersome. What would be neater is to be able to hold multiple conversations about stuff with a particular person, and star topics. So, a bit like email subjects but presented in a chat-kind-of-way. Or maybe keep it as a single stream of messages, but be able to tag a particular message as the start of a 'topic' so it can be found later.

I appreciate people might still tend to just have one endless conversation with a person and star that, which would eat disk space. However, equally, if starred messages never get deleted, I could star every individual message and it would still take up the same disk space as if I'd starred the conversation. Presumably your disk strategy relies on people forgetting to star messages, or not starring them. Otherwise you'll be in a pickle!

As long as I know that 60 days is the limit for unstarred content, I've got no problem copying out message threads and stashing them offline somewhere if there's a particular thread I want to keep. The issue is that it's a real slow process to do so at the moment; made more frustrating by the fact that only the last handful (30?) messages are available, as it's not possible to scroll back further. So every 30 messages I would have to remember to copy and paste.

If/when we are allowed to scroll back in time through a thread, it's still not ideal. Say, 45 days into a conversation I decide there's a bunch of great stuff I need to keep. This would be the process:

1. Click person's name

2. Scroll back until I hit the stop point.

3. Wait for the next batch of messages to lazy load.

4. Scroll back until I hit the stop point.

5. Wait for the next batch of messages to lazy load.

6. ... repeat over and over until I reach the first message I want to keep...

7. Drag to select all messages.

8. Copy and paste.

If we're only going to be permitted to keep 60 days worth of messages per person, it would be cool if there was a facility to download the conversation. Perhaps click a Download link, choose start/end dates (default end date: now, default start date: first available message in thread) and then save them as a text file. Perhaps:

===============

WannabeWordsmith (2022/02/18 13:51:28)

Blah blah message content

Griffers (2022/02/18 13:52:01)

Blah blah message content

WannabeWordsmith (2022/02/18 13:52:41)

lol

2022/02/18 13:52:53

Blah blah more WW message content

Griffers (2022/02/18 13:53:31)

Blah blah message content

...

===============

Dunno. If there was some built in facility to easily download blocks of messages, you might find over time that people would star fewer messages, which would help disk space overall.

Quote by danadmin

AngelWorthy: It sounds like there maybe a loading issue. I'm assuming you are seeing older messages disappear as new messages are added only after refreshing the page? There is no on page cut off currently. Your messages have not been deleted if they were sent within the last 60 days or were starred. I will try and recreate the issue, are you on desktop or mobile? And are you using the messages drop down or the messages page?

UPDATE: I can confirm there is an issue with loading older messages, we are working on a fix. These messages still exist they are just not being displayed at the moment.

I am on a laptop. I had copied & saved all my Lushmail (before the upgrade) up to about the 10th of Jan this year. All Lushmail before then was deleted before the upgrade, with the exception of longer threads that had messages within the last 5 weeks (as I liked to see the date & timestamp on the saved version of the Lushmail). So the Lushmail that I had at the point of the upgrade were within the last 60 days & starred.

With regards to seeing older messages disappear. It is not after refreshing the page. A new message is added to the conversation, I scroll up & wait for all to load, to find the top message that was there before is now gone & the second message becomes the top message.

Also, today, I was saving messages as I was having a conversation. After a while I scrolled up to see if the messages I had saved was in the same order as what I can see on the screen. (I don't know why I did that, maybe curiosity) I found there were missing messages here in Lush, compared to what I had saved. So not all messages are loading or staying on the screen. (there were messages missing from 2 hours ago to 59 minutes ago)

So, have pm changes been made?

Using a phone, l can no longer do a type return in a private message. If l do, it ends and send the pm.

So now l can only send a big continuous block of text. Bummer.

Quote by Buz

So, have pm changes been made?

Using a phone, l can no longer do a type return in a private message. If l do, it ends and send the pm.

So now l can only send a big continuous block of text. Bummer.

Came across this last night when messaging with a friend. (about 11 hours ago) He was on his phone. We were trying an experiment. At one time I had more messages showing at my end compared to him. The top messages disappeared at different times. & he said he was missing messages throughout the messages that were still showing. Hoping these are all just glitches that are in the process of being ironed out.

Quote by Buz

So, have pm changes been made?

Using a phone, l can no longer do a type return in a private message. If l do, it ends and send the pm.

So now l can only send a big continuous block of text. Bummer.

On a lap or box, you have to use Shift/Enter to create a line return. I've no idea how to do that on a phone.

Quote by kistinspencil

Quote by Buz

So, have pm changes been made?

Using a phone, l can no longer do a type return in a private message. If l do, it ends and send the pm.

So now l can only send a big continuous block of text. Bummer.

On a lap or box, you have to use Shift/Enter to create a line return. I've no idea how to do that on a phone.

The only way I've found is to write the message in something else then copy and paste. Except this morning when I used the send message button from a user's profile which seemed to use the old form and allowed paragraphs. Not exactly mobile device friendly.

I think in Facebook Messenger there is a setting you can toggle on or off for whether enter is new line or send, perhaps that could be implemented here?

Quote by Buz
Using a phone, l can no longer do a type return in a private message. If l do, it ends and send the pm.

Yes and no. Depends how you visit the mailbox.

If you tap the envelope at the top and use the 'lite' IM system, enter sends immediately.

If you tap your avatar->Mailbox and select a conversation partner, enter will add a newline. You need to explicitly tap Send to deliver the message or hit Shift+Enter on your keyboard, as Kistin says.

Not sure why it's implemented this way as it's slightly confusing UX but it is nice to have the option. Presumably the Envelope route is for 'quick IM' and the Mailbox route is designed for longer chats. Now I'm used to it, I quite like the choice.

I know this has been noted before, but I am reiterating.

"Messages older than 2 months will be removed unless you star them."

There is evidently a different definition of "month" at work here that what I'd expect, since messages less than 24 hours old have vanished from one conversation. Others have, perhaps, 3 to 5 days' history. But none of the recent conversations has anything past that.

Saving disk space? This is the 21st Century.

Quote by lynnwitt
There is evidently a different definition of "month" at work here that what I'd expect

It's a bug, as noted upthread in an addendum by DanAdmin. They're on it.

Scrolling back through a message history works for me now. Thank you, developers!

Quote by WannabeWordsmith

Scrolling back through a message history works for me now. Thank you, developers!

Same here. You beat me to say something by mere seconds.

Further to my post above...

Just after I wrote that post, a system update occurred. Now there's no Mailbox link from beneath your avatar, just Messages which takes you to the same endpoint as the Envelope icon. So the only access is to the 'lite' mailbox, which means now there's no ability to use Enter for newlines in messages, as it posts immediately.

Drat.

Quote by WannabeWordsmith

Further to my post above...

[link snipped]

Drat.

That link just goes to the home page — or was that the point?

Ack. Sorry. Didn't spot that the endpoint was a private forum. My bad. I've edited my post to remove the link and paste the contents so it's visible.

Quote by WannabeWordsmith

Further to my post above...

Just after I wrote that post, a system update occurred. Now there's no Mailbox link from beneath your avatar, just Messages which takes you to the same endpoint as the Envelope icon. So the only access is to the 'lite' mailbox, which means now there's no ability to use Enter for newlines in messages, as it posts immediately.

Drat.

Just click the 3 dots at the top of the lite mailbox and choose 'view mailbox' to see the full thing.

Edit: that works in desktop view on a mobile phone, which is what I usually have it on.

Quote by WannabeWordsmith

Further to my post above...

Just after I wrote that post, a system update occurred. Now there's no Mailbox link from beneath your avatar, just Messages which takes you to the same endpoint as the Envelope icon. So the only access is to the 'lite' mailbox, which means now there's no ability to use Enter for newlines in messages, as it posts immediately.

Drat.

The Message link on my drop-down takes me to the full page, as before.

When in forums, stories section(page) or while reading a users story, you get the "lite" mailbox.

Anywhere else on the site, by clicking on envelope icon, you'll be directed to full inbox(message) page.

Quote by IMPÜRETHOUGHTS
When in forums, stories section(page) or while reading a users story, you get the "lite" mailbox.

Nailed it, thank you. The menu options are slightly different depending on what page you're on and lead to different endpoints. Cos that's not confusing at all.

I was always clicking the envelope from the forum, which was then giving me the lite popup mailbox. Elsewhere I get the full experience with the (better, imo) Enter-for-newline behaviour.

Quote by WannabeWordsmith

Quote by IMPÜRETHOUGHTS
When in forums, stories section(page) or while reading a users story, you get the "lite" mailbox.

Nailed it, thank you. The menu options are slightly different depending on what page you're on and lead to different endpoints. Cos that's not confusing at all.

I was always clicking the envelope from the forum, which was then giving me the lite popup mailbox. Elsewhere I get the full experience with the (better, imo) Enter-for-newline behaviour.

I much prefer the bigger version too! (get your mind out of the gutter) it feels more like Teams/Skype which is a huge bonus!

Enter for new line, shift+enter to send will catch a few people out who think they have replied, for sure... but it is an improvement