I have to wonder why such a limit would even exist?
The Inbox limit is 1000 Convo Threads and 20000 posts! It's
a lot. This limit existed before the September update, but one of our features was broken until now.
The thing with PMs is that they're not
technically supposed to be a popular way people roleplay on Iwaku as we can't moderate them. This gets tricky because people often use PMs as a way to circumvent our age rules. At the same time, we don't want to stop people from roleplaying in PMs all together, as we have plenty of people who do it for convenience and privacy and we understand having this option is important for them.
A second reason (the one I find more of an issue) is that database space costs time and money. Anytime we have to run a big update it goes thru every post, every pm, every profile, every reaction and it takes hours and a lot of heavy load on the server. Right now I'm with a host who is w o n d e r f u l, so I get away with using a lot of server resources for a lot less than I should be paying. If anything happens to him and I have to change hosts, costs for Iwaku would jump by a ton which would force me to start deleting content left and right to bring costs down. I have to weigh which parts of the site are the most valuable to Iwaku and which parts I can limit to make updates easier and keep costs at a place I can afford even without donors. Because PMs are private, they're not benefiting the site as much as things like the forum posts that bring us steady new members through search rankings. (Fun fact, the convo database is actually BIGGER than our forum posts database right now, and it shouldn't be!)
SO with that long winded explanation, the best medium place we have is having a reasonable Inbox limit for regular members and then offering unlimited inboxes to donors. Statistically, people who donate are much less likely to break site rules because they're invested financially in the site.
You are also absolutely right; having these limits but no way to download the convo threads is dumb. This was an oversight on my part. O_O There is a tool that comes with the inbox limit called
Convert Conversation to Thread and I forgot to turn that on for members. You can copy your entire roleplay convo to a thread in the Thread Archives where you can leave it OR use the
Export Thread to download it (and then request the thread deleted if you don't want to share).
EDITEDITEDIT----- AAAAHHHHH. Just as I was almost done typing this, I went to do a quick search for an Export Conversation mod just to see if one finally existed and I
found one. It's a paid mod by a new developer so it's going to be an
adventure. But we're going to give it a whirl and see if it works out. O_O Expect to see an Export Convo link in the inbox by tonight for testing.