Private Direct Messages

[Sir-Will]

Would be great if it is possible to send a private message to someone in the channel.
Not sure how it can be done on slack, maybe with multiple bots? Or with one and a command like /msg

[captn3m0]

Currently, there is an undocumented feature of sending "confidential messages". You can prepend a message with ! and it is sent only to the slack team, and not to any other anonymous user.

I don't want to implement direct private messages since they go against transparency.(Your team is unaware of any developments that you might have discussed with someone)

[Sir-Will]

I'm currenlty useing an IRC Channel as public channel and would llike to use jinora but sometimes someone needs to talk in a private chat so I connect to the IRC and message him. With jinora this would no longer work and I can no longer talk with the user about exploitable bugs or private contact datas.

[captn3m0]

I'll be adding suppport for talking back "privately" soon. Which means that the following communication modes would exist (jinora is for anon users and slack is for the entire slack team)

• [normal message] from jinora->slack, also posted from jinora->jinora
• [confidential message] from jinora->slack
• [confidential reply] from slack->jinora

The reply will only be sent to the correct anonymous user, and will not be visible to any other jinora user. However, it will be readable to the rest of your slack team.

Does that sound good enough?

[Sir-Will]

Sounds like a good start for me, I would still prefer if there is a way to fully talk in private :)

I don't know how other's see it but I don't like to see confidential data (personal details..) lying around in the team public archive of slack.
I do fully understand your point of view. I guess you come from another sort of team, other use of the public channel or have different thoughts about privacy.

[captn3m0]

There are two ways around it:

• Proper DM support. This way messages reach you and only you. All replies will still need to be prefixed because they all will be passing through the same bot account.
• Somewhat DM support via slash messages. However, this would get lost over time, since no one can see it except for the recipient.

I think the first is better, but harder to build. Another issue with 2-way message support is that since everyone is anonymous, we need some way of automated authentication so people can't take over another person's nick and read their messages.

So yeah, this needs some thought and proper design. I'll try working on it this weekend.

[Slind14]

Wow, that sounds good. Would some sort of email authentication be too much trouble. Like, once you use private messages you get asked for your email. If disconnected and received a message it gets send to the mail with a token link (creates session) to reply.

[captn3m0]

Since messages are ephemeral anyway, and I really want to keep this anonymous and friction-free, I think I'll stray away from logins.

However, I'll probably get sessions in place for this. The issue is that you can't continue your session across devices, but I'm willing to live with that.

[Slind14]

yeah, I see. alternatively it could allow to set a token/password, which you can use to access it.