Usability improvements to PM system

Some thoughts that continually bug me when I try to get around the PM system.

• Consistency: On some pages, there's a link to the mailbox. On other pages, there's a link to "Send PM". On many pages, there's no link to the PM system at all.
  • "Mailbox" and "Send PM" should be coequal options anywhere they are presented in the wiki interface.
• You can't send a PM from within your mailbox.
• You can't get to your mailbox from the Send a PM screen.
• It would be nice if anywhere a troper handle is displayed, it is a link to their page and has an adjacent "Send PM" button.

A "preview message" function would be nice, too, since PMs don't have an edit button.

edited 11th Nov '10 11:03:53 PM by Solstace

Is there anywhere a troper handle is displayed that doesn't have a PM button? There's one on posts, and one on Contrib pages.

Article history, and a few mod tools.

I just noticed that PMs that are no longer displayed in the mailbox still can be accessed by URL. I apologise if this seems rude in the face of the mods' hard work and the server load, but there are several PMs that I'd like to read again for several reasons, at least until I can archive them. So I think that it would be neat if in the future the mods can find a way so that all PMs we've ever received can be kept in pages like we have for the avvie galleries, with each page being a fraction the size of the ones we have now. A more advanced organising system would be wonderful, though probably bit unrealistic. If these cannot be done, some way to inform us of the amount of free space remaining in the mailbox would be great.

I thank the mods in advance for their great work and attention and apologise if these are too extravagant.

Pm's also have no red links of any kind. Not sure if the orange ones like like this work.

edited 6th Aug '11 4:40:23 AM by nuclearneo577

betterthanstrawberry: click this. If you go to the "mailbox", it will show you if you have any new pms, it will also have a link to the old pms you've already seen.

Sorry if this is unrelated, but I'm having that glitch where the PM notification stays even though you read the message. I would delete it to get rid of the notification, but it's an important PM (it relates to Echo Chamber), so I can't do that. How do I fix it?

I just wanted to give an heads-up to that glitch, so it could be fixed in the future.

edited 6th Aug '11 2:13:57 PM by chihuahua0

I know! The mailbox does not display PMs from beyond a certain point, but said PMs are apparently still on the server. If it wouldn't bother too much, I'd really appreciate being able to re-read all the PMs I've received, only preferably divided into smaller pages so as not to overload the server.

A "delete all" or "delete selected" (with the ability to select pms, of course) option would be nice, too, because deleting unwanted pms is an awkward process.

Agreed wholeheartedly.

There is a "delete all". Look at the very top of the column of red "x"s. It does not have a confirmation step, though. Click it and everything is gone.

One feature I'd really like is a "search" feature. I realize that almost no site features this, so it must be pretty hard to implement. E-mail sites use it, but sites with a PM system don't.

However, I've had some very long conversations stretching back months or even over a year, and it would be nice if I could search the body of the messages for a particular subject so I can reread the correspondence regarding it. I don't have the best memory, and clicking through all the subjects is time consuming.

Another thing that would be nice might be "Prev"/"Next" buttons to quickly go to the next PM in the list so back-and-forth correspondence can be easily read.

You can use your browsers "Find on this page" command (Cntl-F) to find any word on the page. That would include sender name and words in the PM subject line.

I'm talking about the ability to search entire contents of messages.

Like, I had a conversation with one person that consists of over 300 messages. ALL of the messages have the same subject line, since neither of us bothered to change it when we replied. To see what we were talking about in any message, I'd have to click each one, one at a time, and look inside.

How about a "search body of all messages for this text" feature like e-mail websites and mail programs have?

Would it be possible to enlarge the number of past messages which can be read?

I agree. I'm noticing mine only go back to March of this year. I've been talking to people longer than that.

That, and the ability to do a text string search through all messages so I can find topics easily (because I have hundreds of Re: messages with the same subject heading) would help a lot.

There's only a certain number you can see in the list. If you delete the ones you don't need to keep, and copy the conversations that you'd like to keep but that are over into a regular text file, you'll find that the earliest one you can see gets further and further back. And really, expecting this site to provide you with unlimited PM storage for long-concluded conversations is really kind of rude.

How many does it list? (someone with the maximum number can determine this by pressing ctrl+f, typing " at " and reporting the number found)

edited 1st Sep '11 1:59:53 PM by INUH

Bumping so that someone can disentangle this into a few actionable tasks.

Well, looking at the OP: Since our avatars are in the header, the inbox is always available so the first request seems taken care of. "Create a PM" is part of the header in the mailbox so requests 1.5 and 2 seem covered.

Not sure if the admins will want to mess with betterthanstrawberry's request in 5, although a 30-day PM archive has already been asked for in Query Wishlist. Equally unsure about the "search P Ms" function asked for in 13 - 15.

Dunno about 6 (no red links)

I think 8 has already been put in Query Bugs.

I've asked for the "delete selected P Ms" function in Query Wishlist.

Since the mailbox is now paginated, I'm not sure that the request in 16 is needed.

So, with that, here's what still looks to be needing a fix:
- Can't get to the mailbox from the Send a PM screen (this applies to the send-a-PM button in someone's forum posts)
- Anywhere a troper handle is displayed, it is a link to their page and has an adjacent "Send PM" button.
- Preview function

edited 29th Feb '16 11:03:26 AM by Willbyr