I was thinking PT could make it possible to send PM's to multiple users, essentially creating private threads, among friends or acquaintances...?

This seems like a simple enough feature to integrate into PT without making much of any change. I don't know what it would require technically but it seems to me that PT would benefit from this feature as it would allow for like-minded people to share ideas and discuss different things without trolls jumping into it and trashing threads...all while allowing people to maintain their anonymity if they want that for themselves. This shouldn't change the site at all, just give an extra functionality to people who regularly use PT. Maybe it would bring a few users back, too. Some people have lost interest in PT because of doxxing, which some current users believe the Glaces and admins don't care at all about. Doxxers could be left out of these private discussions altogether. That's a problem solved for some people! Also, I have a friend who stopped using PT specifically because of the negativity and arguing, and he went to a much smaller, calmer Phish board. Being able to avoid the negativity in some of the threads would be a net positive for the site overall. At the end of the day, PT wouldn't LOSE any users from this, even if main board traffic slowed a little bit over time...which I honestly don't see happening anyway. Why wouldn't people continue posting in the regular threads while waiting for more "friends" to post in the "private threads"??? Not everyone is logged on at the same time!

I'm thinking like, ten users in a message/thread, max, including the sender?

I've never used "The Basis" message board (Disco Biscuits), which apparently has some kind of private thread functionality, but if PT doesn't see the benefit of adding features that other boards already have, they're missing the point of the competition......

Jack Dorsey of Square made it a point, in building Square into the multi-billion dollar company it is today, to make it so that no matter how a customer wanted to pay for something, Square would make it possible. It caught on, and look how well he's done as a result. PT doesn't do hardly anything to advance the site. It's about creating a product that enables the most people to be able to see a positive reason for its use!

I know there is a way to create a private group, but I don't believe anyone uses that entire section of the site. One of the biggest groups in existence is the "tDB videos" group...and there hasn't been a post in that one in several years, and almost all of them are from one user.... https://www.phantasytour.com/groups/186/threads .... Nobody uses the "scenes" thing either...I'm a member of 5 but I rarely look at them and even when I try, the board takes forever to load, which obviously isn't because of higher traffic because the Phish and Biscuits boards are the two most-frequented and load just fine. Of the two festivals I follow, Camp Bisco's forum hasn't had a post in 2 years and Electric Forest's forum has NEVER had a post. They simply aren't active or even paid attention to.

A group messaging feature would be independent of specific board and community, and would enable people to avoid trolls or make plans for shows or whatever else their heart desired. Instead of having to switch between boards, the little mail icon would turn yellow when there are new messages/posts.

Thanks!