Private Message suggestion

When I see "You have a Private Message" at the top of the screen, it could be from someone who I talk to a lot, or very rarely.

I have a couple suggestions for how to improve the notification at the top of the screen.

1) Have it tell you how many private messages you have, so it will say "____, you have 2 Private Messages", letting you know that maybe you got another one while you waited.

2) Have the ability to designate certain people as preferred contacts, "friends", whatever, and change the color of the notification is one of them sends you a PM. That will help people quickly realize "oh crap, it's a PM from a friend" or "oh, it's a PM from someone I don't know. They can wait." Related to that, have the notification be red if the PM is from a moderator, so people will be less likely to ignore such messages (or have it actually say "You have a Private Message from a moderator. Please read it now.").

3) Have it straight up say "you have a Private Message from _____" at the top of the screen.

Anyway, just some ideas to improve the PM notification system.

I like these items. The "red mod message" thing sounds like a recipe for disconfort though.

Make it light red instead?

I think it's best to just have the name. However, if all names are written, and you have a lot of messages, it may get cluttery unless it just stops at some points and just say, "and 42 more messages".

Mod messages can have their names appended with (mod).

Maybe displaying the name of the latest person to send a PM, plus a number of others who sent one, would be a good idea. Or the last two people to send a PM.

That, and the color change from green to blue if someone you designated as important or a friend sent a PM.

Yeah, how are those ideas? And the light red for a moderator PM.

That colour choice thing is good. I give a blanket no to any special moderator colours as a) they aren't needed on all messages and b) it's going to create the disconcert effect any way you design it.

I send far more P Ms as Madrugada-the-regular-poster than I do as Madrugada-The-Mod

Okay. Other than the mod color thing, how are the other ideas?

I like the number suggestion. The colour change is more of a "fun" change, although I would not consider that a bad thing per se.

Yeah, a "fun" change, but also potentially a useful one. It serves a purpose similar to showing the name of the person who sent you a PM (or who last sent you a PM, if there's more than one), in the sense that it lets you know specific people sent one.

Now that I think about it, being able to mark specific tropers with specific colors would be a nice feature. But also not totally necessary if the PM indicator shows the name of the person who last PMed you.

I'm used to the green color and I don't think I'll be as comfortable with red. That color is better suited for in-site announcements.

I personally check a PM right away regardless of who it is; since the forums are the main method of communication, I consider it important when it's a message personally delivered to me.

The number suggestion is fine.

Yeah. I think the number suggestion is the one most likely to catch on, though I would really like a "color your friends" feature, or something so I see a blue or purple or whatever PM notification and think "Awesome, ____ got back to me!"

How much do I have to donate to get this awesome feature added? Okay, I'm half joking.

Ed has some other problems to fix. Like the crowners

I really like the number of unread messages idea - I know I've left a message unread that I know will take too long to respond to at the moment, then found four or five waiting for me when I finally get to it.

And as long as I'm here... could I request an 'are you sure you want to do that' pop-up for the delete all button so I don't accidentally erase all my messages? Again?

Rather than delete all, I'd like to see checkboxes.

Checkboxes would be even better.

Best Of mentioned checkboxes in another discussion. I would support that idea as well.

Agreed on either checkboxes, or a "are you sure you want to delete?" message. In fact, I'd gotten two PMs in the past about something else that happened: apparently in the past, pages that I was on were accidentally flagged for review due to my web browser spazzing out. I was asked twice why I reported ______ for review, when I hadn't. So that also could use a "Are you sure you want to ____?" message.

Anyway, I also hold off on replying to PMs until I have more time, and it would be nice to have a number of messages, and possibly even another feature: the ability to mark a message as unread, or as "waiting for reply".

I still think the ability to color specific tropers would be nice, similar to how some mail programs separate the number of messages you have total from the number you have from "friends", or how some mail sites allow you to consider certain people priority.

So you could color a certain troper orange, and then when you get a PM from them, the notification could be orange. When it's anyone you did not color, the notification would look normal.

While more of a "fun" change as has been pointed out, I think it would be keeping in the light-hearted spirit of this site.

Definitely support number of unread PMs in notification and some layer of confirmation for mass delete

That's exactly what I was about to make a thread about.

I also wish you could sort your messages. Like put them in folders or have an automatic filing system that puts PMs sent back and forth between a troper into one folder and there'll be a folder for each troper you exchange messages with. Or hell, I'd even be happy with a folder system for the day the message was sent. I wish the messages weren't just listed there on the page. Needs to be better organized.

That's another good idea. What if you wanted to reread old conversations, or find something a specific person said? It would be nice to have multiple possible views.

Make the PM's have rules like:

1. Don't send over 5 messages to one person after one reply. Flooding there inbox won't make them respond that second and will likely annoy them.

2. No hateful, obnoxious, or racist/sexist comments.

3. Don't abuse the blocking system.

4. Trolling isn't tolerated

Wishlist:

1. You can invite someone into the conversation.

2. Avatars to appear above the message.

3. A spell correction program, like on Open Office.

2.

1 is common sense, 2 and 4 are covered by the rules already, and I'm not sure about the manners in which one would abuse the blocking system (you aren't able to block mods).

1... you mean sending a PM to two people at once or something? 2, fair enough, 3 I don't see a use for because browsers come with spellcheck programs nowadays and it's private communication where spelling isn't as important.

As for the rest of the thread, checkboxes to delete multiple messages would be a wonderful thing, and showing who sent you a message/how many messages there are in the banner would be neat.

Having a 3-way or 4-way conversation would be a neat feature, and I don't even know of any site that has it. I imagine it must be annoying to program, and it could be difficult to figure out exactly how it might be made, but a "add person" button might do it, converting all subsequent messages to 3-way or 4-way or whatever. It would be an original form of conversation, actually.

I still want the "you have [number of] Private Messages" feature, and/or the "You have a PM from [name of user]" feature. Those would be very useful for most users I think. I realize that my "color the PM notification bar" is a pipe dream.