Need access to Private pm`s

Client Joined: Dec 04, 2004 Posts: 757

Hello all, over the past year I noticed a massive decrease in members posting on one of my forums, the post count has dropped from hundreds to just a handful a day Shocked

I have bee wondering for sometime what the problem has been so today I decided to see if I could find any abuse of the pm system as an answer and to my surprise the answer was there Shocked

Basically I am finding pm`s that get directed at New members asking them to join various other forum on the same topic Shocked

When looking through the database I find it very hard to work out which members has which pm text description so I cannot actually track down the offenders Crying or Very sad

Is there an easy way to find out who has what pm etc????

I have had my forums around 8 years and would never consider checking pm`s but if I want to keep it alive its now my only option to remove these members and monitor pm`s.

Thanks for any help all
mrix

Posted: Wed Nov 30, 2011 3:20 pm

In the bbprivmsgs table there is a from and to user id field. You could use that to determine who is sending and receiving the messages. You'd have to join that to the bbprivmsgs_text field on the privmsg_id in order to see the text of the message itself. You might also need to do a join with the user table to find out the username of the userid's you are seeing in the bbprivmsgs table.

You can use phpmyadmin to investigate the tables but you might need to write a little ad hoc program to pull off the joins I mentioned and make sense of the data.

I may be an odd ball out but I'd like to see private messaging go away, maybe if we ever upgrade forums. Let 'em use email to talk to each other. It bugs me that as a site admin I have people's private messages sitting in plain text right in my database.

Posted: Wed Nov 30, 2011 4:34 pm

There are a few PM admin hacks that allow you to view PM's. Find PHPBBHACKS HERE. If you choose to read PM's you might want to update your privacy policy to state that they are viewable by admins. You might need to update some of the code to work with RN.

Posted: Thu Dec 01, 2011 3:20 am

Hello and thanks for the idea`s, I really appreciate it!
I am sure you know what your talking about but generally the joining which you speak of between the tables somewhat confuses me Crying or Very sad

If its eve possible I need to try ad find a more simplistic way around the problem.

I have found so many members abusing the pm system and spamming other members, I really need to find who they are ban and remove etc.

Thanks
mrix

Posted: Thu Dec 01, 2011 3:46 am

Hello Doulos, unfortunately I have no choice to read pm`s and remove these offenders Sad

The link you sent appears to be hacks for phpbb3 and phpbb2 if I use these hacks I guess I have no idea if they will work with Ravennuke???

Thanks
mrix

Posted: Thu Dec 01, 2011 7:22 am

Yes, I know for a fact they do work, but as I said the code might need to be updated to work with RN. I don't remember, but one of my users had me add one of those to his copy of RN2.40.01 - it works. I will add it to my test server when I get a chance to see what changes, if any, are required.

Edit: Just upload the files to the appropriate folder in here: /modules/Forums folder and it works.

GET IT HERE

Posted: Thu Dec 01, 2011 8:31 am

In my opinion it´s just worthless to deactivate these members because they will reregister normally under an other nick name and afterthat it will be harder for you to find out who it is and to track these new members. Why not deactivate the PM for a while and see how it goes. If this doesn´t help you will know there is also possible an other problem related to search engines.

Posted: Thu Dec 01, 2011 8:23 pm

Here is some SQL that I just threw together to give you an idea on how to accomplish what you are after:

Code:




select a.privmsgs_id, a.privmsgs_subject, c.username as FromUser, d.username as ToUser, 


a.privmsgs_date, b.privmsgs_text from


nuke_bbprivmsgs a, nuke_bbprivmsgs_text b, nuke_users c, nuke_users d


where a.privmsgs_id = b.privmsgs_text_id


and a.privmsgs_from_userid = c.user_id


and a.privmsgs_to_userid = d.user_id


order by a.privmsgs_id desc;

You will need to run it in something like phpMyAdmin.

This gives you the PM "feed" in most recent at the top order.

Posted: Thu Dec 01, 2011 8:28 pm

Oh, and to show you even a little more, let us say that I want to see all PM's where I wasn't included on either the from or to, here is a slightly modified version:

Code:




select a.privmsgs_id, a.privmsgs_subject, c.username as FromUser, d.username as ToUser, 


a.privmsgs_date, b.privmsgs_text from


nuke_bbprivmsgs a, nuke_bbprivmsgs_text b, nuke_users c, nuke_users d


where a.privmsgs_id = b.privmsgs_text_id


and a.privmsgs_from_userid = c.user_id


and a.privmsgs_to_userid = d.user_id


and c.username <> 'montego' and d.username <> 'montego'


order by a.privmsgs_id desc;

Have fun! (I think.)

Posted: Fri Dec 02, 2011 3:32 am

Fantastic! thanks montego Smile

Cheers
mrix

Theme Guru Joined: Jan 11, 2006 Posts: 170

Hi mrix, I bet you don't like fishing. Smile

Very nice website! If you don't mind me asking, what country do you hail from.

Posted: Fri Dec 02, 2011 9:21 pm

mrix, it is definitely just a starting point as I am not 100% sure on what the statuses mean and such. But, you can at least see how the joins work and pull in additional fields into the output or where clause as needed.