Actually, I find private reply to public requests to be an even more unacceptable mode due to causing as great an increase in noise but with zero increase in information. It can even lead to copy-cat requests as those watching get curious what the previous requesters got shown privately. Afterall, the limitation on the CB is the number of lines (never more than 10 shown) so an action report still consumes 10% of the available real estate while providing almost nothing of value.

To reduce noise in the CB, it would actually be better to have requests to a bot be made only via private message with the option of requesting either private or public reply. A public reply would mention who asked for it and so could provide all of the available information in a single line of chatter.

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