I was happy to receive responses to my questions about Italy - back in late March. I thought I could private message a few of the responders but don't know how to. Can someone help?

Unlike many forums, this forum does not provide Private Messaging from member to member. All you can do is address a response specifically to an individual on the thread you started.

Or you can take a look at other similar forums and see if you find the same person.

I think if people wanted private messages, they might list an email address in their profile. I know some people do. Otherwise, they might not want random messages from people on the internet. And in fact, if you have questions about a particular post, it would be more contributory to the purpose of the forum to not request private info, but to leave it on the thread IMO.

I agree that questions about travel should be kept in a public forum, because a useful forum can die if all the discussion goes private.

Kerouac has a good idea, to see if you can find that same person on a travel forum that allows private messaging. However, although I can easily be found, I answer all travel travel questions, except those about things that might be embarrassing, with a boilerplate saying that I prefer to keep travel discussions in public forums.

You say their name HERE and either tell them YOUR email address or ask them for theirs. LOTS of people here "private message" but they use other avenues like Facebook to do so.

I think when iB finishes converting the forums to the new platform, PMs will be a feature. Which may end up seriously cutting the amount of traffic on the boards. I personally think most of the travel questions/responses should be out in the open.

But as the others say -- there is currently no PM option on Fodors.

What you should do is 1) top your threads where people helped you, asking for more advice/suggestions, or 2) start a new thread asking for more info.

Where does this idea that PMs will significantly affect the forum come from? The travel forums who provide private messaging certainly don't seem to be suffering by doing so. Maybe some of you guys need to 'get out more.'

Giving out an e-mail address in a forum is never a good idea Dukey1. There are inernet 'bots' that trawl the internet looking for valid e-mail addresses which then end up being sold to spammers.

You can always disguise your e-mail address thus:
xxxx at yyyy dot com.

I too believe that the purpose of public forums is to keep conversations open and inclusive of everyone. However, if you want to contact someone, you could post a request to be contacted using a disposable email such as one from http://www.mailinator.com/.

Yes you can do that jaja and it will avoid bots. Yes you can do that Sarastro.

But wouldn't it be simpler if you just clicked on 'Send PM' under the person's name as you do in many forums?

Having a PM capability is up to the forum owners to determine but the idea that it would somehow affect the forums adversely just isn't shown to be the case as evidenced by those forums who provide it.

There are many reasons why someone might want to send a message to an individual that they don't want to share with the whole forum. It's only ever a plus, never a minus to have that choice.

In the past, I have written to the board mods and asked them to contact the other person and ask if it is acceptable to exchange e-mail addresses. But that was many years ago.

There's no way to know whether or not allowing private messages negatively affects the forum experience unless you do a controlled test. Tripadvisor has hundred of times more traffic than Fodors, and taking 10% of it private doesn't have a negative affect. Fodors could very easily be negatively impacted by allowing private messages

There are obviously some questions that are best asked privately, such as, "How do you say hemorrhoid cream in Spanish?", or "Where can I get emergency contraception in Frankfurt?"

As a participant in a forum that allows private messages, I find that the majority of the questions I get asked privately would be better asked in a public forum, where other people would be able to see the answers and not need to ask the question yet again.

LOL, I love your, "where other people would be able to see the answers and not need to ask the question yet again." bvlenci.

If that were true I would be 100% in agreement but even public posted questions get asked over and over and over again on every forum. So that dog won't hunt at all.