Tracking private messages

[arthurk]

About 9 years ago I was involved in a thread with two other people who haven't been active on the forum since around that time. Recently a new member has posted on the thread, and in case the two original contributors aren't still subscribed to it I sent them a PM.

Unfortunately I overlooked the Read Receipt option when I sent it, so is there any way now to find out if it has actually been delivered? Presumably if they no longer have the same email address, the PM notification will have bounced - but would I be told about that?

[Lesley Robertson]

Arthur, I have left a request for ADMIN to look because I don't know.
I will be very surprised if they can trace it because we're always told that noone can touch the pm system and only the sender and recipient can read it.
The simplest thing might be to send a second message with the RR option checked...

What does it say under the user name (where yours describes you as "famous"). If they are no longer a member, it will show them as "visitor", and your message will not have gone through. You could also send me the username and I can check and see when they were last on BG.

[arthurk]

Thanks - the people concerned are both shown as Newcomer to Brit-Gen, with just a few posts each. Unless there are other secret tools that tell you more, I can see their last activity from their profiles (About Me tab).

I was thinking of sending a follow-up with a RR request, but that would only tell me if/when a message was read. If I didn't get the RR back, how would I know if they'd lost interest, or decided not to send me the RR (if that's an option), or if the notification email hadn't reached them?

[Lesley Robertson]

Apart from the Mods, the grades are based on number of posts, which suggests that they have been very inactive. You'd be surprised at how many people come once, or maybe twice - I suspect that quite a few are expecting free look-ups and when people just tell them where to look, they lose interest. One person a while back told me off for not doing my job since I didn't quickly search for his ancestors!

The RR is automatically generated, but I don't know how our system deals with bounced mails.

[timbo58]

Sorry but admin can't see if it's been delivered either.
In theory, all messages will have been 'delivered' to the recipients mailbox on the site and they'd have had an automated email forwarded to their registered email address to say they have a message waiting.
As Lesley says though -if they've deleted their account then no message would be able to be sent.

Whilst I have the same email address(s) I had 9 years ago, a lot of people use disposable email addresses just for one forum/site, so after any lengthy period of time they simply won't see responses, whilst that might seem mad to you & me as genealogists/enthusiasts some people do only have a fleeting interest.

[arthurk]

OK, thanks. Any thoughts on bounced emails? When an email can't be delivered it's sometimes returned to the sender, though in my experience this can take up to 72 hours - and I suspect some email providers might simply junk such messages rather than send them back.

[timbo58]

Unfortunately, nothing is recorded on any admin system for bounced emails.
I suspect when the email system was set up a rationale was decided upon by the forums then-owner (and re-evaluated when we took on the forum)as to what purpose we might be monitoring bounced emails for.

i.e. The normal justification for such is to gauge the effectiveness of email marketing & since the forum doesn't do that it wouldn't be included.

As you say, many email providers don't even bounce back messages anyway, and that still wouldn't help with email accounts that are still there but dormant.

[arthurk]

Thanks for that - seems like we'll just have to wait and see if they're still there and interested.