Ability to redact multiple messages

[aurabindo]

When there are lots of messages, it is inconvenient to delete them one by one.

[lampholder]

This raises an interesting question - how easy do we want to make redacting?

I guess what we should consider is a mechanism for 'selecting' multiple messages; then you can quote them, redact them, forward them etc.

[pafcu]

Related: element-hq/element-web#5536

[lampholder]

Related:

• Find a way to allow bulk redaction to help folks manage spam element-web#2158
• https://github.com/vector-im/riot-web/issues/3689
• bulk redact API element-web#5885
• riot should queue up and retry redactions element-web#5898

[PC-Admin]

Why would anyone want it to be that hard?

Riot is currently quite annoying to use because of this. Want to delete 5 messages? You are going to have to click 15 times. 15. It's a cruel joke.

You should be able to select multiple messages (or all in a room) then redact them with 3 clicks.

Can we please make this happen? The Riot UI/UX is currently bad and i would like to see Riot become something worth telling people about.

[Croydon]

Since we are just getting in a lot of spam from Freenode, I would really love to see this happening.

[rubo77]

Limit it to IRC bridge users and only to users who already left

[jywarren]

Much agreed! We're getting hit hard in https://riot.im/app/#/room/#publiclab-testing:matrix.org (warning ugly content)

on the order of hundreds of messages from 10s of spambot users.

Any way for us to help out?

[nunoperalta]

I was looking into this suggestion. I hope it's still being considered.

[rubo77]

put a +1 on the first post to vote for this feature

[MurzNN]

Good example of UI for multiple select messages (for delete/reply/forward) we can lookup in https://vk.com/messenger app:

[n1trux]

Why is this major papercut p3 and open since 2017?

[ara4n]

a) it has not been a higher priority because matrix's rate limiting means it's relatively unusual to end up with large amounts of spam in a room (as spammers can't spam quickly, and you can redact as fast as they spam). it's also worth noting that other messengers (e.g. WhatsApp) don't have this feature, and Telegram only sprouted it relatively recently (in the last year). it's become more of a priority over the last few months, and the priority label hasn't been adjusted to reflect that.
b) this is a new feature.
c) it's being worked on right now at matrix-org/matrix-spec-proposals#2244.

[n1trux]

Thank you for making this p1. Excuse my snark.

[grinapo]

a) it has not been a higher priority because matrix's rate limiting means it's relatively unusual to end up with large amounts of spam in a room (as spammers can't spam quickly, and you can redact as fast as they spam).

…unless you sleep and in the morning there are 378 messages waiting with female genitalia. :-) That'd be 1890 clicks.

c) it's being worked on right now at matrix-org/matrix-doc#2244.

Yep, let's watch not to hit rate limiting with redactions, until gets 2244 implemented.

[n1trux]

element-hq/element-web#7660 [Feature Request] Add "clear chat history" option or multiple message selection

seems to be related.

[damascene]

Any update on this issue. Still hard to delete multiple messages one by one. Please add select option.

[rubo77]

As a workaround use the spam-fighting bot:
https://github.com/matrix-org/mjolnir

[gravax]

Still no update... Deleting 86 messages from 86 fake spamming accounts that all arrived within 3 minutes of each other this morning... That's 5 clicks for each (remove recent messages, ban)...

[alittlebitofit]

@gravax damn thats so annoying and such a waste of time

developers please make this a highest priority already, for all platforms
Android, Web, etc

1-multiselect
2-multicopy
3-multidelete
4-multishare
5-other things that can be done with multi feature that i dont recall as of now

thank you

[dimyself]

why do all these big sites/apps have all this useless crap features that no one hardly cares about...but main vital features aren't available???

I have a conversation with someone and i need to delete like 200 latest msgs, but i cant!

This shouldn't even be a hard feauture to implement! why since 2017 this isn't available??? after 5 years, you can't put multi-message select???? wtf!

Makes me not even want to use this crap

[rubo77]

It is already possible to react the latest 50 messages or so by a spammer. It is hidden in the right sidebar somewhere

[iav]

And it's bad.
Because nobody knows, how many messages will be deleted.

[kwinz]

Other issues keep getting closed in favor of this one which are more generally about selecting multiple messages element-hq/element-web#9655, element-hq/element-web#16218.
But here the discussion mainly centers on covenient bulk redacting or deleting! Not surprising because this issue's title is "Ability to redact [...]"

I need multiple message selection for FORWARDING, not for deleting. Please don't forget the FORWARDING use case!

Either also discuss the FORWARDING use case here or allow a separate issue for this use case that is not going to be closed as duplicate.

[kwinz]

Can you rename this issue to "Ability to apply actions to multiple messages"? Or "Ability to manipulate multiple messages at once"?
Or should I open a separate issue for that?

As @alittlebitofit said we need an issue that handles

1-multiselect
2-multicopy
3-multidelete
4-multishare
5-other things that can be done with multi feature that i dont recall as of now

Not just redaction.

[damascene]

Any update on this. what is the convince way to easily delete multiple messages?

[eandersons]

Use a Matrix client that supports deleting multiple messages at once. I am using FluffyChat for this purpose.

[altf4arnold]

Any update on this? We get alarms from our monitoring system every 5 minutes until alarms get acknowledged. That made for some 90 messages some times that I have to then take out for readability of the chat