Frequently Asked Questions

This section is part of the OxfordRomance.org.uk online help system. (show contents). You can also view the entire document as a single very long page.

Help! I'm getting more messages than I can cope with!! What can I do?

It's great that people are interested in you, but sometimes good fortune can also be problematic: itt can at times be very difficult to cope with a large volume of messages, so here are a few things you can do. If you are writing to someone who is in this situation, please read the following to understand the setting they have chosen. Options:

Write a more descriptive profile. This should clarify what you are looking for, and should help to ensure that you receive fewer, but more relevant messages.
Organise your messages by flagging the ones you want to look at again. Ruthlessly delete anything else!
Become invisible, so that people cannot tell when you are online. This has its advantages and disadvantages.
Decline messages from people you do not wish to chat to. This is how.
Opt to accept new messages only from existing correspondents. See below...
Take a break, and temporarily hide your profile.

If you wish, you can choose to correspond only with people you already know; other people will be unable to contact you. This is far from ideal, but it is a much better alternative to rushing away entirely because of the volume of new messages. You have 3 options, controlled by the "Do you welcome new messages from everyone" setting here. These are:

'Yes, permit all'. This is the default case: all messages will be accepted. We strongly suggest you leave this setting unless you are feeling deluged!
'No, restrict'. In this case, only people with whom you have already corresponded will be able to send you messages. Everyone else will receive an error message "Sorry, [Nickname] is not accepting new correspondents", and an explanation. This is, ideally, an option you should not need to use!
'Just one message of introduction'. This is not quite as severe as 'No': new people are not turned away immediately. They receive the notice "Note: [Nickname] is only accepting a single message of introduction" and an explanation. This effectively gives them just the one chance to impress you; unless you write back, they will be unable to send you further messages.

These settings do not effect your existing correspondents who are able to write to you as normal. If you are receiving messages from them, and are not interested, you should decline.

For the curious, here are some fine details, which you can safely ignore. Correspondents (for these purposes), are considered to be anybody to whom you have ever sent, or from whom you have received a message. If any copy of the message remains on the system (even in your trash, or in their trash), it counts. If you are accepting 'Just one message', then if they have sent you exactly one message [only messages within the last 6 months count], they cannot send more; if they have sent none, they get one chance to impress; if they have sent more than one, they count as a correspondent and can continue to write. However, once all copies of a message have been permanently deleted (by both sender, and recipient), the server no longer knows it ever existed. [In contrast, the correspondence page only cares about your own copies of the messages.]

Administrators are, necessarily, unaffected by this restriction; they also cannot reject messages. This setting does not apply to channels. There is one slightly odd consequence, which occurs if you switch from 'No' to 'Just one', or vice-versa: anyone who has sent you exactly one message, and to whom you have not replied, will find that their permission to write to you is inverted.

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