Topic: Messages. Background: We consider ourselves "chat clubs" and yet the message board is really the mainstay of most clubs. While many founders are currently complaining about the feature that allows e-mail of messages from the message board, the emphasis once Yahoo! merges with eGroups will be even more e-mail dependent. At the same time, many of the tools presently available for control of the message board need serious revamping. Please make sure you enter reference as "Messages / specific topic" in e-mail sent to [email protected]. MESSAGE BOARD MESSAGES WITH ATTACHEMENTS:  For any club it would be nice for people to be able to use a post to display their pic or drawings. They could also display their message too.     This will be available with the merged product as well. Take a look at eGroups, they currently allow you to attach files and pictures to messages if you so desire. TRUNCATED MESSAGES: Why are messages truncated?     I believe the limits for posting to either of these is 3,000 characters. So if you're writing anything longer than this, break it up into multiple postings. REPLY via EMAIL: An option to reply to a messsage post via email.     Yes, this is one of the big reasons the eGroups technology is so great -- the mailing list features. This will definitely be a great part of Clubs once the merged product rolls out. QUOTING IN REPLIES: I'd like to see some kind of quoting option for the copy-and-paste impaired users.     Yes, this too will become part of the deal... especially since you can reply by email. SEARCH MESSAGES:  Founders allowed to EDIT messages for language and content when necessary.     Search will be provided as part of the merged product. However, EDITING will not. You may delete posts, but changing someone's words by editing their text isn't something we'd want to allow. You wouldn't want to give someone the ability to change your words around would you? That's going down a bad road...   MESSAGES BY EMAIL: Ability to remove the Messages by Email feature from your club if you don't want it!     Why wouldn't you want it? I think this is more of a member level decision.  If you don't want to receive messages by email, that's fine, but I like to see recent activity without having to constantly look at my club page throughout the day. Shouldn't that be my choice to elect to receive them?  It's not spamming your inbox, only my own. Also when I see activity in my club, i'm more likely to come back and post, so this feature encourages activity... it doesn't detract from it. I suggest a Founder's option to allow mailed posts from the message board for their club.  Again, we talked about this previously. I think this makes more sense in the user's hands. If they want to read the message postings from their email, that should be their choice to do so. No one else has to be subjected to the mail, only the people who choose to receive it. Why would you want to prevent them from doing that?   LENGTH OF MESSAGES: I believe the limits for posting to either of these is 3,000 characters. So if you're writing anything longer than this, break it up into multiple postings. INSTANT MESSAGE: You know it would be nice if you could send one instant message to all your members online at anyone moment in time as defined by the list you see on the 'front door' with the additional refinement of being able to select from that list who to send instant messages to.This would be great for inviting folk to chat in room rather than have to send to each individual by 'cutting/pasting' messages!     That's a good suggestion. I'll work with the Messenger producer to see if something like this is possible. FOUNDERS MESSAGE OF THE DAY: It would be nice to have space for just one Founders Message of the Day which didnt get covered up by other members messages.This would be great for saying that there was such and such event in the chatclub today!! The message wouldnt then drop off the board during the day and would remain up in a prominent place all day.     You could just edit the Founder's Message for this, no? I have thought about something like this, but I don't think most club founders would use this. They hardly edit the Founder's Messages as is, so the enginnering time to do this probably isn't justified with all the other things we have to work on. DELETE MESSAGE link...could you please move it a little farther away from the Reply link. New co-founders and people who move back and forth between clubs where they are founders and where they are not will appreciate this one.     We'll fix this with the merged product... sooner if we can do it easily. MESSAGES BY TOPIC: option to link messages by topic, edit, and store as group (or as a condensed single post, with option to delete the other posts when desired) in a folder inside of club, with the ability to add or delete or modify material at a later date. Not all of this will be appropriate for all clubs, but some can use features such as these to enhance the club experience for their membership.      This is a pretty difficult undertaking, and currently is not in the works. We are considering several different methods of organizing messages, but nothing has been determined yet. NO REPLIES: For one thing, if there is no reply to a certain post, there should not be a �view replies to this message�. Yahoo message boards do not have this problem, and it often saves time if you are looking for a specific post.     Good point... we're going to have a reworking of the Club message archiving system. Check out what eGroups currently has... we'll move towards a system similar to theirs for the merged product.   TOC Review Topics Introduction to TOC Visit Yahoo! Club Founders' Club CFC Main Page You are visitor to this page. This page and its graphics were created by exclusively for The Club Founders' Yahoo! Chat Club. It is best viewed on a 800x600 screen set for True Color with or and is hosted by . Get them NOW!