It's great for organising new games and staying in touch with people with whom you're not currently playing and for whom you don't have an email address.

But isn't EVERYONE's e-mail on their profile?

Makes it possible to keep in touch with people you've played with outside the forum. Also to message people from the forum that you've never played with privately. I think it's excellent.

If you want to message someone from the forum that you've never played with, just start a game, and call them out.

It does have a purpose. Sending messages that are private.

Basically, it offers a way for the FAO_______ threads to be more direct to their intended recipients.

And I think that anyone who was trying to meta-game would have easily been able to do so before this PM system.

I agree pretty much with Onar and TGM, especially as anyone you've played with before you can find easily enough, and anyone you haven't is now really accessible through the see-all forum.

And, let's be fair, there haven't been masses of meta-gaming complaints recently anyway!

I like it. There are players I want to keep in touch with that I'm not actually in any games with, and for whom I don't necessarily have an email address - people like to be semi-anonymous around here. Plus, the notifications from the games are now in one place - and the turn notification are really helpful.

Emails being displayed is optional. The system has my email address but it isn't displayed in my profile for example.

Also, I believe the old system didn't require a valid email so some players would have put in bogus email addresses and then the mods couldn't get a hold of them.

The PMs also help arrange games, allow people to send passwords for private games arranged via the forum without others joining when they shouldn't, and lots of other stuff.

Lastly, if you were going to meta-game, you would have to be stupid to do it within "the system" where mods could potentially look at it. I'm all for giving enough rope for the stupid cheaters to hang themselves. The smart cheaters will continue with email. Assuming there are any of them out there.

There's nothing wrong with metagaming anyway, stop whining. This is DIPLOMACY, not afternoon tea.

I'm very glad to see PMs. I often find a player I'd love to meet again, and talking to them is a great way to keep tabs and organize a friendly game full of fun players. And yeah, if I wanted to metagame I'd just ask someone's email in a normal in-game message.

I posted on this earlier. Don't like the idea at all and will not be using it. There is no way I would put a truly private message through it with the archiving here.

Anyone who meta-gamed using it would be a complete ass: I'm not sure what the official policy for admin access is but the messages would be available for evidence.

Its not their to give your bank its details flashman- its just a way to send a message to a player that nobody else needs to know, so that they are more likely to pick up the message than just posting on the forum.

it's a very nice feature enabling the user to easily harass other members. I love it!
Rlumley here comes another one...

I remain unconvinced. I ca see people getting a bit too relaxed, especially with personal details.

ca = sixth sense, the ability to cross time and space to know what people are thinking...

This is the problem with phpD-- webDip development at the moment, that pretty much any change made is going to be controversial. I think the last thing we added which everyone supported was the rewritten 0.8 adjudicator

Now despite many asking for PMs/home pages/update notice feeds/NMR status many now that they're out many come and give valid reasons they're opposed to them. Suggestions like flash based maps and alternate points systems are things many rally behind but that are also controversial, so it's harder to know which way to move forward and it's always demoralizing to not know whether work = progress. This is often the reason FOSS projects have an big initial spark of development and then taper off

Understood and appreciated. I did say above that my opinion is likely to be extreme. I can live with a PM system, I just won't use it.

I am more concerned that the site suddenly seems a lot harder to use, especially for a newb joining a few games at once. Could this be a turn off?