"Insufficient Access. You do not have permission to manipulate messages for this character."

I'm getting this bizarre message when attempting to delete old PMs in one of my games. This happens with both the PMs from a character that no longer exists, and PMs from one that exists but has recently changed hands (in case that's relevant). This happens with PMs from both the previous version of that character and the current one. I don't have any PMs from characters that have always been around under the same ownership that I want to delete to check to see what happens with them.

This only happens in one of my games, and the GM of that game has no idea why it's happening. Any ideas how to fix this?

(Apparently I was quite wrong, when I went digging through all of my games that had PMs I could test for deletion, I found that in 4 of the 6, I was unable to delete PMs and getting the same error, without the GM knowing why.)
This message was last edited by the user at 02:00, Fri 24 Apr 2020.

Have the characters in question reverted to GM control?  (Or were they owned by the GM from the beginning?)  That's the only thing that comes to my mind...since the GM would have higher access than you, it seems logical to me that it would potentially interfere with your ability to alter anything about those characters (including PMs...)

Hm. Maybe. Let me see if there's anything in common with what was successful versus what didn't work. The array of PMs that I had/have available to test is limited, but from the games where I had PMs that I could test...

Game 1: Attempted to delete a PM between myself & the GM. Failed.

Game 2: Attempted to delete a PM between myself, another PC, and the GM. Successful.

Game 3: (This is the one with the PC that changed hands, GM confirms it was never directly under his control.)
Attempted to delete a PM between myself & the PC that changed hands from when it was under the original controller. Failed.
Attempted to delete a PM between myself & the PC that changed hands from after it was transferred to its new controller. Failed.
Attempted to delete a PM between myself & a PC that no longer exists in the game (this one was briefly under GM control before being deleted). Failed.

Game 4: Attempted to delete a PM between myself & one other PC that no longer exists in game. Successful.
Attempted to delete a PM between myself, the GM, 3 currently existing characters (one a GMPC), and 2 that no longer exist in game. Successful.

Game 5: Attempted to delete a PM between myself, 1 currently existing character, and 1 that no longer exists in game. Failed.
Attempted to delete a PM between myself, 2 currently existing characters, and the GM. Failed.

Game 6: Attempted to delete a PM between myself & 1 other currently existing PC. Failed.

(Edit: Dug up a Game 7 that the GM had closed, but is still undeleted: Attempted to delete a PM between myself, the GM, and two other PCs. Successful.)

Other information:
Games 1-5 have the same GM, and he's got no idea why there's any difference.
Games 1-4 are active, and I have posted in the past month in all four (within the past week in 1-3), so I don't think it's from inactivity.
Game 3 & Game 6: I was able to contact two other players who successfully deleted a PM in one of the games. Different player in each game. (So it must not be some accidental game-wide thing.)
Game 5: I feel like I have deleted at least one PM in this game in the past, but I'm old and it's been a while, so I'm not 100% on that.
Game 7: Another player attempted to delete a PM here (the exact same PM that I deleted successfully) and was also unable to do so. (If this is a bug, it isn't just me.)

Best I can tell, it doesn't seem to make a difference whether or not the PM includes the GM (or a GM PC), since I managed to successfully delete at least one PM that included either the GM or a GMPC. It also doesn't seem to matter if I'm the author of the PM or not.
This message was last edited by the user at 14:28, Fri 24 Apr 2020.

I sounds like it's an ownership issue.  Have you been the sole owner of those Characters from creation until now?

All of the characters that I play in any of those games have always been 100% mine from creation on. They've never even had a name change.

I can also verify that the other player that was unable to delete a PM in that last game I dug up has also always had sole ownership of their character there.

Also just verified that I can still edit thread posts, and the PM posts themselves in all of my games, just to make sure it wasn't somehow prohibiting me from making ANY changes. It's only deletion that's blocked.
This message was last edited by the user at 15:46, Fri 24 Apr 2020.

Odd. My understanding is 1) that PMs are attached to the character ID, no the player ID (this is why when a player is assigned an existing character they see all the old PMs) and 2) all recipients of the PM can delete their own copy without affecting the others - ie if you delete the PM on your list, it doesn't remove it from the GM list.   So yes, you should be able to delete any PM you can see.

Now how it does this I don't know ... might store a list of all character ids in a field and then tries to edit it as PMs are removed by recipients and (thinking out loud, and as has been suggested) it then hits a problem updating the list when another character ID doesn't exist OR a character ID used to belong to the GM and aborts the update, leaving it still on your list.

Just a thought ... are you using the responsive site or the old site ?  If you're using responsive, try the old site, just to check it's not something funny in the new code.

Either way, I'm afraid it's something for jase to have a look at when he gets time.

You know Skald, I hadn't even contemplated that it was a difference in the site, since after all it worked on some of the PMs I tried and not on the others, I had assumed it was just me. If it had been all of them, I probably would've thought to check live vs. responsive earlier, but I didn't - so thanks for the suggestion. :)

Good news! Everything worked when trying to delete it on the live site. (Or everything I tried to delete, at least. I saved a few, so I'd have something to test in the future.)

Bad news, it still doesn't work on responsive, so something's still wrong out there.