14

Just for curiousity is there a way to send a private message through any SF facility to another SF user?

1
  • I have come across a case where I wanted to alert a user who had accidentally published some security sensitive information. A private message would be the only appropriate way to do that. Even publicly stating which user I wanted to get in touch with would potentially alert other people who might find and decide to abuse said information.
    – kasperd
    Jul 27, 2015 at 11:55

2 Answers 2

10

As Michael said, no such thing.

If you really need to contact someone directly and the exchange cannot be in the public, the best thing to do is post some contact information in your profile and nudge the other person in that direction with a comment ping.

If you don't want to put contact details/hints in your profile, another possibility is setting up a Stackchat and exchanging details with burn on click links once you're reasonably certain you're chatting in realtime.

So far this is the only thing that has saved @HåkanLindqvist from me attempting to become bestest internet DNS buddies with him. Or at least until I get around to stalking him on social media.

8
  • Here you are specifically saying "and the exchange cannot be in the public". What if I want to send a message to a specific user, and I don't care if it is public or not? Adding comments to a question or answer is sometimes the proper approach. But if the message is related to a locked question, or simply to draw a specific person's attention to a question, that approach wouldn't work.
    – kasperd
    May 7, 2015 at 12:04
  • @kasperd If that's the case, just mention them in a chat room with an @ tag
    – Hyppy
    May 7, 2015 at 13:11
  • @Hyppy So, if I created a new chat room and wrote a message with one person tagged, how visible would it be to other users? Would it be displayed so prominently, that others might be bothered by it?
    – kasperd
    May 7, 2015 at 13:22
  • 2
    @kasperd I don't think it would be a bother to anyone. Heck, feel free to use the Comms Room even (link on the right side). The only notification ends up in the user's inbox, it's not like we're all blasted with every line of the chat rooms.
    – Hyppy
    May 7, 2015 at 13:26
  • 1
    @Hyppy I noticed that if you find a user profile in chat, there is even a button to start a new chat with that user, as can be seen on chat.stackexchange.com/users/116210/kasperd or chat.stackexchange.com/users/10312/hyppy. But I couldn't find a link from the user profile on SF to the one on chat, so it appears in order to use that button, I have to go to chat.stackexchange.com/users and search for the username.
    – kasperd
    May 7, 2015 at 16:11
  • 1
    @kasperd I already put a feature request to have the link to the chat user on Meta.SO some months ago, but seems they didn’t implement that yet ☹ would be useful here.
    – mirabilos
    May 8, 2015 at 13:20
  • 3
    I am pretty sure you can't @ someone in chat unless they have recently been in chat.
    – Zoredache
    May 8, 2015 at 20:14
  • @Zoredache Looks like you might be right about that.
    – kasperd
    Jun 17, 2015 at 21:53
8

Stack Exchange has no private message facilities for general use.

There is, however, a private message facility for moderators to contact users in regard to serious moderation issues. Messages sent via this interface are copied to all moderators and all Stack Exchange community team members. For the most part you should hope you never see this interface. :)

2
  • Do you think that this might be a nice addition? Hiding the name using some type of alias as does LinkedIn?
    – mdpc
    May 7, 2015 at 8:26
  • 3
    It's been discussed to death many times over the years, and the answer is still no. May 10, 2015 at 1:44

You must log in to answer this question.

Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged .