What determines speed of "PM" delivery?

[brainpicker]

Do any of the Mods (or perhaps Bill) know what determines the speed at which a PM is delivered on the forum? I've not been able to figure it out. Here's why I ask. Sometimes I'll send a PM and it appears in my Sentbox right away. Other times it stays in my Outbox for an hour, a day, or a week, or weeks (and maybe is never sent). Sometimes it's delivered and sometimes not. Sometimes I receive others PM's in a timely manner and sometimes not. Sometimes never. Now I thought it might have to do with room in the sender's Sentbox or the receiver's Inbox (thus the ability to have the PM moved from the Outbox to the Sentbox, or into the receiver's Inbox) but that don't seem to be an issue as most of the time the boxes were near empty. Recently I have not received some PM's or others have not received some of my PM's timely (within a day or two) and subsequent conversations are awkward as information we thought was passed on was not. It's especially bad when someone asks me for information or a favor via PM that's not received, then they find out later I helped someone else at a later date and "seemingly" ignored their earlier dated PM. It's not a life-altering problem, but it would be nice to know how this PM thing works (or doesn't). One would think that since it's a closed system that PM's should be fairly instant or at least as fast as e-mail which may travel around the world and through many systems and servers, but PM-ing seems to resemble "snail mail" in delivery speed and reliability. Maybe there's a little monkey or mouse manually moving the PM's from box to box ?!

Any thoughts?

Thanks!
-Yak

[JaneL]

As far as I know, a PM stays in your outbox until it is picked up and read. Then it moves to your sentbox.

[brainpicker]

As far as I know, a PM stays in your outbox until it is picked up and read. Then it moves to your sentbox.

That makes great sense, and I thought that too, but when I'm asked about a PM via e-mail (or the other way around) it is often the case that the receiver can't find the sent PM in their Inbox even though it shows in the Outbox of the sender. If that's the case then your explanation, though sensible, isn't practical. But then much in life is that way!

Thanks,
Yak

[JaneL]

Well, in that case, just blame it on sunspots! ;-)

[BillMorrow]

i never thought much about this topic, but it seems it will need to arrive in the recievers mailbox and be read before it leaves the outbox..

we can run an experiment if you wish..