Comments on: Who are the people in your contacts list?

Who are the people in your contacts list?

pb — Thu, 15 May 2008 08:50:50 -0800

We made a few changes to the contacts page.

The contacts page has a few new features. The biggest change is that your list of contacts and the list of members who have you as a contact (we're calling contacted by) are now on two different tabs. Here's an example: mathowie's contacts, mathowie's contacted by. Also, within the contacts list you now have the option of viewing them two different ways: compact and full. You can switch views with the View link at the top right of the page. The compact (default) view is very similar to the old view, plus: - mutual contacts are highlighted - you can filter the page by relationship (click a relationship to filter to that type of contact) - you can filter by new contacts that added you in the last month (click show new at the top of the page) The full view adds everything from the compact plus: - profile photos from your contacts - quick links to edit/delete/mail people on mouseover of their icon - real name and location from their profile When you change views from full to compact (or vice versa), a cookie is set to remember your preference. The final change is the activity tab, which is essentially the same thing you see for your contacts' activity in Recent Activity. The difference is that this is now public, so you can check out mathowie's contacts' activity (minus filtering and who's adding who among his contacts). This is hot from the code factory so there are bound to be bugs. Please post them here as you find them, thanks!

By: Ufez Jones

Ufez Jones — Thu, 15 May 2008 08:57:41 -0800

Good stuff, but I kind of hate that the tab for contacts within profile has been swapped for the term "Social". Kind of hurts like a burning urethral fire. Or so I hear.

Also, clicking on "Activity" leads only to a long list of "ColdChef had a comment with 80-someodd favorites" and "homonculus had a post with 70-someodd favorites" through and through. Can you make my contacts more interesting? Thanks.

By: ThePinkSuperhero

ThePinkSuperhero — Thu, 15 May 2008 09:00:44 -0800

Neat! Thanks!

By: pb

pb — Thu, 15 May 2008 09:00:59 -0800

It's always been Social on the profile page afaik. That wasn't part of this change, anyway.

By: ThePinkSuperhero

ThePinkSuperhero — Thu, 15 May 2008 09:01:29 -0800

Although I'm not crazy about the picture-less frame for users who haven't uploaded a user photo- perhaps the frame should disappear if the user doesn't have a picture?

By: mathowie

mathowie — Thu, 15 May 2008 09:03:36 -0800

When we take out the pictureless frame, the layout goes all wonky and mis-aligned.

By: dersins

dersins — Thu, 15 May 2008 09:05:53 -0800

Guess you'll just have to update your profile, TPS.

By: pb

pb — Thu, 15 May 2008 09:05:59 -0800

Plus the frame-spaces are needed for the MeFi Mail, Edit, and Remove links that appear when you hover over them.

By: Mister_A

Mister_A — Thu, 15 May 2008 09:06:49 -0800

Can we just write "Shy" in the frame for those users, like they used to do in the yearbook when someone wasn't there on picture day?

By "we" I mean "you".

By: jessamyn

jessamyn — Thu, 15 May 2008 09:07:29 -0800

It always said social. Sorry about your urethra.

By: Ufez Jones

Ufez Jones — Thu, 15 May 2008 09:09:43 -0800

It always said social.

Really? Guess I hadn't noticed.

Sorry about your urethra.

Nah, I'm peeing fresh and clean. Thanks for the concern. The Sad Urethras would be an awesome crusty punk band name, though.

By: Kattullus

Kattullus — Thu, 15 May 2008 09:09:56 -0800

I've whacked every button I can think of and nothing has broken.

By: Kattullus

Kattullus — Thu, 15 May 2008 09:12:08 -0800

Oh! I was wrong. I'd forgotten about the new "activity" features. I added "added you" to the filter and got the "Error: File not found" page. Here's the url I was sent to:

http://www.metafilter.com/usercontacts/#cookie.user_id#/activity/

By: Dave Faris

Dave Faris — Thu, 15 May 2008 09:12:08 -0800

While the empty boxes don't bother me, did you consider just using a generic avatar?

By: loquacious

loquacious — Thu, 15 May 2008 09:13:03 -0800

Awesome. Is there any way I can get a "sort by date added" option?

I'm almost permanently chronologically confused.

By: Kattullus

Kattullus — Thu, 15 May 2008 09:13:25 -0800

Same thing happens, in fact, when I try to change anything about the filters.

By: pb

pb — Thu, 15 May 2008 09:19:01 -0800

Thanks Kattullus, should be working now.

By: Mister_A

Mister_A — Thu, 15 May 2008 09:19:50 -0800

The filter buttons are all working fine for me (OS10.5.2 FF2.0.0.14), but the logo looks weird and skinny on this page:

http://www.metafilter.com/usercontacts/40584/activity/

By: pb

pb — Thu, 15 May 2008 09:23:16 -0800

When we added profile pictures we had a generic avatar on profile pages if someone hadn't uploaded a picture yet. But that didn't go over well and we had to remove them. So we steered clear of them for this update.

By: Jofus

Jofus — Thu, 15 May 2008 09:24:21 -0800

This is great. Now add me, bitches.

By: Kattullus

Kattullus — Thu, 15 May 2008 09:28:48 -0800

The activity page is working fine now, pb, but it was set to all boxes unchecked. I don't know if that was just me because I was fiddling with it before or if that's now what it defaults to.

By: romakimmy

romakimmy — Thu, 15 May 2008 09:30:04 -0800

mutual contacts are highlighted

I have totally awesome vision thanks to the coke-bottle strength contact lenses, but does anyone else using the plain theme have to squint to see the nifty highlighting?

If not, I guess I should <evil>update my graphics card drivers</evil>....

By: Jofus

Jofus — Thu, 15 May 2008 09:30:44 -0800

Incidentally, this post led me to the little hideaway of understated joy that is Jessamyn's userpage. Ah! Like a limpid pool!

By: pb

pb — Thu, 15 May 2008 09:31:07 -0800

Kattullus, your filter preferences should be in sync with your contacts' activity page in Recent Activity. And changing them in either place should set them for both.

By: interrobang

interrobang — Thu, 15 May 2008 09:34:54 -0800

Highlighting is practically invisible when using plain theme.

By: jessamyn

jessamyn — Thu, 15 May 2008 09:38:59 -0800

I can see the highlighting okay, but I guess we could darken it up to be the same as the "best answer" color but we really wanted to make sure usernames were READBLE first with the mutualness being secondary.

By: ThePinkSuperhero

ThePinkSuperhero — Thu, 15 May 2008 09:39:01 -0800

Guess you'll just have to update your profile, TPS.

Nevah!

By: Plutor

Plutor — Thu, 15 May 2008 09:39:43 -0800

If you've got the mark contact contributions Greasemonkey script installed, and haven't upgraded in the last couple of weeks, you will now notice it no longer working. Go and update now.

Much love, pb. Great work, as usual.

By: timeistight

timeistight — Thu, 15 May 2008 09:41:17 -0800

Very, very nice, pb.

By: Eideteker

Eideteker — Thu, 15 May 2008 09:45:00 -0800

Hmm, what's this button do? *clicks on "Full"* AGH IT'S HIDEOUS! COMPACT! COMPACT!!!

By: ThePinkSuperhero

ThePinkSuperhero — Thu, 15 May 2008 09:45:12 -0800

I particularly like the mutual contact highlight, which highlights who has NOT added me back as a contact. This will help me shame those people into adding me back. Shame! Shame!

By: pb

pb — Thu, 15 May 2008 09:52:21 -0800

I just set highlighting for the plain theme to the shade in between best answer color and sidebar color. Highlighting should be more visible now.

By: carsonb

carsonb — Thu, 15 May 2008 09:55:42 -0800

I haven't added any contacts recently, but when I click on the show new link I get the erroneous message "carsonb doesn't link to any other MetaFilter members" thrown my way.

By: Eideteker

Eideteker — Thu, 15 May 2008 09:57:06 -0800

"- mutual contacts are highlighted"

Oh, man, this is awesome.

Day 1, MeFi Mail #1
Dear [redacted], how are you? Remember me? We met at the Lower Hattiesburg meetup back in aught-six. I added you as a contact, but you never added me back. I just wanted to let you know. Hey, if you hurry, you can be contact #100 for me!

Day 3, MeFi Mail#2
Hey, did you get my message the other day? I know you were logged in, because you had that totally awesome comment in the catpants FPP. It's probably not important, but could you add me as a contact when you get around to it? Thanks.

Day 4, MeFi Mail#3
Now you're starting to piss me off. While I was waiting for you to add me, I went through my favorites and systematically removed every contribution of yours I had in there. Have a nice fucking day, shitbag.

Day 4, MeFi Mail#4
WHY? WHAT DID I DO WRONG? WHY WHY WHY DO YOU HATE ME OH GOD I'M SO WORTHLESS

I CAN'T LIVE WITHOUT YOU ADD ME BACK BEFORE I DO SOMETHING WE'LL BOTH REGRET

Day 6, MeFi Mail#5
Hey there! I'm MeFi Mail-ing all my old contacts to let them know I've got a new account. The old one got disabled somehow. Anyhow, when you get around to it, could you add my new screenname as a contact? Superthanks!

By: cortex

cortex — Thu, 15 May 2008 09:59:25 -0800

Hmm, what's this button do? *clicks on "Full"* AGH IT'S HIDEOUS! COMPACT! COMPACT!!!

You will not be surprised to hear that we anticipated just such a reaction. We are slowly turning into Guessing What Portions Of The Userbase Will Hate ninjas.

By: jessamyn

jessamyn — Thu, 15 May 2008 10:00:47 -0800

We are slowly turning into Guessing What Portions Of The Userbase Will Hate ninjas.

I am the Grandmaster of this.

By: mumkin

mumkin — Thu, 15 May 2008 10:01:31 -0800

What need is the "show new" parenthetical link at the top of Contacts and Contacted By tabs supposed to serve? I know that jessamyn has crazyloads of contacts, but is it common to have so many that you need to filter it down to the ones added in the last month?

Regardless of the audience, being the low-contact fellow that I am, when I click said show new link, Contacts says "mumkin doesn't link to any other MetaFilter members," which is untrue. Since there's no indication other than /new in the URL that I've got a filtered view here, this is a bit odd. It also doesn't include the (show all) link like Contacted By.

Contacted By, incidentally, says "mumkin doesn't link to any other MetaFilter members as new. (show all)" which strikes me as a very odd way to phrase things. Perhaps 'No MetaFilter members have added mumkin as a contact in the past month' ?

Also, when I remove a contact by using the little mouseovery icon on their image, they are removed, but I am redirected to their profile page instead of (as one might expect) to a fresh view of my own contacts sans removed contact.

By: Ambrosia Voyeur

Ambrosia Voyeur — Thu, 15 May 2008 10:04:30 -0800

wootles, I like the totals. I've met 50 mefites! (let's not talk about how many admit to having met me...)

By: matthewr

matthewr — Thu, 15 May 2008 10:04:55 -0800

Surely none of the userbase hate ninjas. And those that do don't last long.

By: Eideteker

Eideteker — Thu, 15 May 2008 10:08:17 -0800

"You will not be surprised to hear that we anticipated just such a reaction. We are slowly turning into Guessing What Portions Of The Userbase Will Hate ninjas."

I don't know what you're talking about. I'm referring to the picture of some stinking hippie freako detaching his jaw to ingest a giant donut. I almost lost my lunch (found it again, though).

By: Mister_A

Mister_A — Thu, 15 May 2008 10:10:40 -0800

This is really a pirate userbase, with a ninja ruling class. It takes a ruthless dictator to hold it together.

By: interrobang

interrobang — Thu, 15 May 2008 10:10:43 -0800

I just set highlighting for the plain theme to the shade in between best answer color and sidebar color. Highlighting should be more visible now.

Hooray! Thanks.

By: Eideteker

Eideteker — Thu, 15 May 2008 10:10:46 -0800

"wootles, I like the totals. I've met 50 mefites! (let's not talk about how many admit to having met me...)"

It took me 5 minutes to find the one person I list as a contact who I actually haven't met.

By: pb

pb — Thu, 15 May 2008 10:10:53 -0800

carsonb and mumkin, thanks, I've cleaned up the default error messages so things should be clearer. Clicking show new with no new contacts you get x "...hasn't linked to any other MetaFilter members in the last month (show all)." And there's a similar message for the same state on the contacted by page.

And removing a contact should take you back to your contacts view now.

By: Mister_A

Mister_A — Thu, 15 May 2008 10:12:21 -0800

I saw a guy that looked just like cortex, sans donut, and wearing a tie, on the platform at Penn Station NYC about 4 weeks ago. I was a little freaked out! I was like, where is the donut?

By: cortex

cortex — Thu, 15 May 2008 10:15:24 -0800

This is really a pirate userbase, with a ninja ruling class. It takes a ruthless dictator to hold it together.

On account of late stage diabetes, said dictator is necessarily baby ruthless.

By: tommasz

tommasz — Thu, 15 May 2008 10:19:06 -0800

My total lack of friends has never been more clearly shown until now.

By: sambosambo

sambosambo — Thu, 15 May 2008 10:20:32 -0800

I see that I'm not on my own list of contacts, yet I am on my list of "contacted by." Why's that?

I like the rollover MeFi Mail on the profile pictures though. Neat-o!

By: loquacious

loquacious — Thu, 15 May 2008 10:20:34 -0800

By: romakimmy

romakimmy — Thu, 15 May 2008 10:21:17 -0800

Sweet. Cheers, pb.

By: pb

pb — Thu, 15 May 2008 10:28:49 -0800

sambosambo, we were filtering out self-contacts in one place but not the other. (We are now.) At one time it was possible to add yourself as a contact (I think it still is possible by playing with some URLs), but we don't officially offer adding yourself as a contact anymore.

By: ThePinkSuperhero

ThePinkSuperhero — Thu, 15 May 2008 10:30:25 -0800

Please oh please can I have a sort by chronological order button? Why does it have to be all fancy and smart in the "show new" link? Why not just "show all by date added" with some nice timestamps or something?

The "Activity" page can show this for people who have added you, if you remove all other data points. I don't know if it's date or page length defined- mine goes back 6 months. It would be interesting to be able to see the converse, people you have added, but I suppose there's no other section of contact activity where you see your own activity.

By: Marie Mon Dieu

Marie Mon Dieu — Thu, 15 May 2008 10:33:18 -0800

This is cool, thanks! I added some people who had added me but I'd missed.

And also added Jofus because I am a bitches: Being In Total Control of Herself... Eventually. Sometimes.

By: matthewr

matthewr — Thu, 15 May 2008 10:35:17 -0800

This is really a pirate userbase, with a ninja ruling class. It takes a ruthless dictator to hold it together.

Ruthless? Probably a complete Nancy, just Blacketting our good name.

By: salvia

salvia — Thu, 15 May 2008 10:52:35 -0800

>> We are slowly turning into Guessing What Portions Of The Userbase Will Hate ninjas.

> I am the Grandmaster of this.

Is Grandmaster Ninja something you list directly on your resume then, or is it more of an informal, ad hoc role for you?

By: Greg Nog

Greg Nog — Thu, 15 May 2008 11:01:56 -0800

A fun game for those of you who haven't clicked on "full" yet: before doing so, guess which of the people who added you as a contact have facial hair in their profile pictures.

0 - 20% correct: "Better luck next time!"
20 - 50% correct: Goatee Guesser
50 - 70% correct: Hair Prophet
70 - 90% correct: Mighty Face Master
90 - 99% correct: Beard Blasta
100% correct: "You am become Shiva, destroyer of worlds."

By: jessamyn

jessamyn — Thu, 15 May 2008 11:12:50 -0800

Is Grandmaster Ninja something you list directly on your resume then

Listing on your resume implies you might be open for offers form people willing to pay you to do it. Put another way "I have my finger on the pulse of what MetaFilter can't fucking stand" seems like scant qualification for anything.

By: rtha

rtha — Thu, 15 May 2008 11:14:02 -0800

Love the new pony! Thanks!

By: loquacious

loquacious — Thu, 15 May 2008 11:14:53 -0800

What the..? Ok, it appears that all of my contacts are bearded. Even the women.

And there goes all hope of ever getting a date from MeFi ever again.

By: blue_beetle

blue_beetle — Thu, 15 May 2008 11:20:19 -0800

Is this one more step on the way to implementing Google's Open Social?

By: blue_beetle

blue_beetle — Thu, 15 May 2008 11:26:00 -0800

Also, can we PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE get a profile picture for Anonymous?

By: ColdChef

ColdChef — Thu, 15 May 2008 11:28:21 -0800

Also, clicking on "Activity" leads only to a long list of "ColdChef had a comment with 80-someodd favorites" and "homonculus had a post with 70-someodd favorites" through and through. Can you make my contacts more interesting? Thanks.

I can take off my pants if you'd like.

By: Mister_A

Mister_A — Thu, 15 May 2008 11:39:13 -0800

C'mon loquacious. There are many examples of attractive and intelligent bearded women. So many, in fact, that I am not going to list them here. When I am walking down the street with one of my esteemed colleagues, and I espy a comely bearded lass, I have been known to prod my walking-companion in the ribs jovially, and whisper, "Behold, Johnson! A beauteous bearded wench approacheth! Forsooth, I would smite yon lissome haunches , would not thou, O scandalizing rampallion?"

By: salvia

salvia — Thu, 15 May 2008 11:43:04 -0800

Listing on your resume implies you might be open for offers form people willing to pay you to do it.

Good point. I was just wondering if Grandmaster Ninja was now your official title (among others, probably).

By: Eideteker

Eideteker — Thu, 15 May 2008 11:45:15 -0800

'"I have my finger on the pulse of what MetaFilter can't fucking stand" seems like scant qualification for anything.'

It may be scant, but it's all I have. OMG myFavorites == Hastings.battle, so it must be working.

By: nebulawindphone

nebulawindphone — Thu, 15 May 2008 11:47:40 -0800

I can take off my pants if you'd like.

What I want to do is filter my contact list by pants status.

By: jessamyn

jessamyn — Thu, 15 May 2008 11:49:20 -0800

I would smite yon lissome haunches

FOR
FUCK'S
SAKE!

By: Mister_A

Mister_A — Thu, 15 May 2008 11:50:58 -0800

I just wanted to see if that counts. Next time I'll MeMail you.

By: languagehat

languagehat — Thu, 15 May 2008 11:51:53 -0800

Forsooth, I would smite yon lissome haunches

Does that reset the clock?

Oh, and nice work, pb!

By: languagehat

languagehat — Thu, 15 May 2008 11:52:13 -0800

Sigh. Too late again.

By: loquacious

loquacious — Thu, 15 May 2008 11:54:09 -0800

I actually know a girl with a decent little beardlette, and not only does it work for her but she's also all kinds of kicking ass.

Also, I take that back. There's no women with beards in my contacts. There's just too many nerdy neckbeards in my contact list.

*ponders growing a long stripy beard*

By: yhbc

yhbc — Thu, 15 May 2008 12:12:03 -0800

stavrosthewonderchicken knocks the grid out of line. Long usernames which are broken into words get put on different lines, but is there an upper limit to the number of unbroken characters which can be a username? For that matter, is there an upper limit to the number of characters, period, which can be a username, because having too many words would knock the grid out of line the other way.

By: pb

pb — Thu, 15 May 2008 12:24:49 -0800

yep, yhbc, there are problems with long usersnames in the full view. We set the font smaller for long usernames, and that keeps it from breaking in an unusable way. But that's not perfect. I'm not sure there's a way around it beyond truncating the name and adding "...", so it's a trade off between an off grid or incomplete usernames in that view.

is there an upper limit to the number of characters

Yep, there's a 50-character limit on usernames. That's a lot of characters.

By: eyeballkid

eyeballkid — Thu, 15 May 2008 12:41:35 -0800

Yep, there's a 50-character limit on usernames.

We should shorten that to ten.

By: Miko

Miko — Thu, 15 May 2008 12:45:08 -0800

What need is the "show new" parenthetical link at the top of Contacts and Contacted By tabs supposed to serve? I know that jessamyn has crazyloads of contacts, but is it common to have so many that you need to filter it down to the ones added in the last month?

I'm glad to see this not because I have as many admiring swains as Jessamyn does, but because often I'll notice my # of contacts has gone up by one, and when just glancing at the list of contacts, I'm pretty much unable to tell who the new one was or when they added me. "Contact Activity" was a roundabout way to grab that, and this is much easier to use. So when you notice your number's ticked up one or two, you can see exactly who it was without too much trouble.

Well done, thanks!

By: desuetude

desuetude — Thu, 15 May 2008 12:50:46 -0800

Hey, you people who I have met in real life for fucks sake add me back.

By: onlyconnect

onlyconnect — Thu, 15 May 2008 12:53:09 -0800

When I try to click on "linked by" or "links to" I get an error page and then get logged out. (Thanks for the login info, Matt!"

This might be a one-time thing. But if you continue to have this problem, please contact the MeFi Admins with the following information:
Element USER_ID is undefined in COOKIE.
The error occurred on line 30.
Current Page: http://www.metafilter.com/usercontacts/14493/contacted-by/
Referring Page: http://www.metafilter.com/user/14493
Date and Time: Thu May 15 12:37:04 PDT 2008
Your Browser: Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.1; SV1; .NET CLR 1.1.4322; InfoPath.1; .NET CLR 2.0.50727)
The information above can help us diagnose the problem, thanks.

Let me know if you need the "your location" info.

Are my contacts trying to nudge me out of Metafilter? "Oh hi guys I just --" SMASH "ow hey where am I not logged in anymore? okay let's try this again doot doo doo doo" SHINY ERROR PAGE OF DEATH LOGS YOU OUT AND TAKES YOUR LUNCH MONEY.

By: desuetude

desuetude — Thu, 15 May 2008 12:53:29 -0800

Oh, I like the new contacts thingy, though.

By: onlyconnect

onlyconnect — Thu, 15 May 2008 13:01:21 -0800

I'm sorry for being all shouty there. I thought it looked cute on preview, but now I just look like Bill O'Reilly. I regret this.

By: pb

pb — Thu, 15 May 2008 13:09:10 -0800

onlyconnect, I think I patched things up. You might try again. Logging out and then back in might help because the error was related to your MeFi cookies. But at least you shouldn't get the ugly error anymore if you are logged out.

No problem on shouty, but I was getting ready to cut your mic.

By: Cranberry

Cranberry — Thu, 15 May 2008 13:28:18 -0800

"Logging out and then back in might help because the error was related to your MeFi cookies." pb advised onlyconnect. Hope onlyconnect recorded his/her password somewhere.

By: quin

quin — Thu, 15 May 2008 13:41:54 -0800

Ooh, I like the expanded and sortable Activity page. That's going to cut my stalking time in half.

Excellent work! Thanks.

By: Mister_A

Mister_A — Thu, 15 May 2008 13:48:04 -0800

quin, the other way to look at it is, you can now stalk twice as many people.

By: fixedgear

fixedgear — Thu, 15 May 2008 13:55:24 -0800

Is there a way to delete a contact?

By: Plutor

Plutor — Thu, 15 May 2008 13:58:58 -0800

Sometimes if you snark someone enough, they'll close their own account.

You snotbucket.

By: pb

pb — Thu, 15 May 2008 14:00:27 -0800

Is there a way to delete a contact?

In the compact view, click a username and then on their profile page, click "remove" under their username. In the full view, if you have JavaScript enabled, click the red circle (-) icon as you hover over their profile picture (or empty frame).

By: rtha

rtha — Thu, 15 May 2008 14:20:36 -0800

Bug?

On my profile page, it says:

Links to: 87 users
Linked by: 51 users

But then in the tabbed view (compact), it says:

You link to 86 MetaFilter users ...
50 MetaFilter users link to you ...

What's happening with that?

By: pb

pb — Thu, 15 May 2008 14:23:55 -0800

rtha, you link to yourself as a contact, and we don't show (or count) self-links on the new contacts pages. I'll update the counts on profile pages to reflect that.

By: onlyconnect

onlyconnect — Thu, 15 May 2008 14:25:47 -0800

Thanks, pb. Now the glitch on the contacts page seems to be fixed, but when I tried to move from my user page back to this thread it logged me out again. On the upside, this is making me type in my password alot more so maybe I'll remember it now!

By: aramaic

aramaic — Thu, 15 May 2008 14:30:36 -0800

We are slowly turning into Guessing What Portions Of The Userbase Will Hate ninjas.

This could be solved by simply designing things to be aggressively hideous. Electric pink, purple, nauseous blue-greeny shades, etc.

I've always been partial to admins that actively hate their users and take steps to make that clear (all their users, not just me. That already happens a lot and thus isn't quite so entertaining).

By: yhbc

yhbc — Thu, 15 May 2008 14:33:38 -0800

One of the rationales for linking to yourself as a contact was to be able to see on the front page under "contact activity" if any of your comments or posts had received twelve or more favorites. Without the ability to link to yourself as a contact, how will any future insecure egostrokers get their instant gratification fix?

By: pb

pb — Thu, 15 May 2008 14:33:49 -0800

...when I tried to move from my user page back to this thread it logged me out again.

There's nothing on the new contacts page that could log you out, so I'm guessing there's a problem somewhere else. Try removing all of your Metafilter cookies, and logging in again. (Sorry about all the password practice.) Sounds like there's something preventing the site from identifying you properly, and that usually indicates a bad cookie somewhere in the mix.

By: rtha

rtha — Thu, 15 May 2008 14:35:48 -0800

Thanks, pb - makes total sense.

By: pb

pb — Thu, 15 May 2008 14:38:38 -0800

good point on the favorites-watching, yhbc, we might want to add that as an option for the front page sidebar. Though there are a couple pages on the site already that can show you favorites on your posts and comments.

By: fixedgear

fixedgear — Thu, 15 May 2008 14:45:32 -0800

Thanks, pb.

By: ThePinkSuperhero

ThePinkSuperhero — Thu, 15 May 2008 14:48:14 -0800

So when you notice your number's ticked up one or two, you can see exactly who it was without too much trouble.

That's nice- now I want a feature that will show me who has UNcontacted me. You know who you are ::casts evil glares in all directions::

By: grouse

grouse — Thu, 15 May 2008 14:52:35 -0800

The thing you can't tell anywhere other than the sidebar, as far as I can see, is which of your answers have been marked best.

By: dersins

dersins — Thu, 15 May 2008 14:59:08 -0800

Here. But I agree that I miss having my best answers and heavily-favorited comments show up on the sidebar. Of course, that's because I'm both insecure and deeply self-centered, but I don't see why that should bother anyone but me...

By: dersins

dersins — Thu, 15 May 2008 15:01:23 -0800

BUT BUT BUT BUT BUT

By: grouse

grouse — Thu, 15 May 2008 15:03:43 -0800

Thanks, dersins. But that is nowhere near as convenient, as you say.

By: stavrosthewonderchicken

stavrosthewonderchicken — Thu, 15 May 2008 16:29:48 -0800

Is Grandmaster Ninja something you list directly on your resume then

Don't push me, cause I'm close to the edge
I'm trying not to snark that thread
It's like a jungle sometimes, it makes me wonder
How I keep from going under

By: trip and a half

trip and a half — Thu, 15 May 2008 20:43:17 -0800

*clicks*

My God, it's full of stars!

[thanks]

By: flapjax at midnite

flapjax at midnite — Thu, 15 May 2008 21:00:48 -0800

stav, dude, how could you leave out the most important part of that quote?

Ah-huh-huh-huh-HUH!

I mean, c'mon, it's like "she loves you" without the "yeah yeah yeah"...

By: scody

scody — Thu, 15 May 2008 22:58:29 -0800

Hey, many thanks, pb. I've always wished there was better filtering for contacts, and now my prayers have been answered!

Now, let's move on to that request for a little villa in Italy.

By: iamkimiam

iamkimiam — Thu, 15 May 2008 23:31:13 -0800

I went to check out the new contacts page and I was bummed when I saw that my contact count went down by 1. And I was thinking to myself, "aw shucks! What did I do? Was it my profile? My scary picture of demonic cats? Why did somebody decide they didn't like me today? WHY GOD, WHYYYYYY!?!?!"

Then I realized it was me. I was no longer my own acquaintance, friend, co-worker, colleague, co-resident, muse, crush, date, sweetheart. Sometimes the feeling of rejection really *is* all in your head.

By: nthdegx

nthdegx — Fri, 16 May 2008 03:37:38 -0800

Minor query: shouldn't these contacts pages, and all profile sub-pages, link back to the user's main profile?

Take mathowie's favorited activity page. His username at the top is a hyperlink to his main profile. I'd apply this also on the contacts pages (and anywhere else).

This ship has sailed, but I don't understand the logic behind the urls for a lot of these features. I'd have given everything a subfolder of the user's profile page, so if mathowie's profile is here:

http://www.metafilter.com/user/1

I'd have put contacts here:

http://www.metafilter.com/user/1/contacts/usercontacts

And contacted by here:

http://www.metafilter.com/user/1/contacts/contactedby

Likewise I'd have put activity here:

http://www.metafilter.com/user/1/activity/

I think this would have been a more navigable, intuitive hierarchy.

By: pb

pb — Fri, 16 May 2008 10:00:59 -0800

...shouldn't these contacts pages, and all profile sub-pages, link back to the user's main profile?

Yep, just made the page title a link back to the user's profile.

And I agree on the aesthetics of the URLs. The ship has sailed, but it's the sort of thing we could change someday if we feel like renovating. There isn't a lot of manual URL hacking going on to find things here—and not a lot of external links pointing deep into user activity—so I think the change could work out ok. We could run into URLs on the long side for some things like searching a user's activity, but a unified name space for all user information would feel more solid to me too.

By: BitterOldPunk

BitterOldPunk — Fri, 16 May 2008 11:26:51 -0800

The changes to the contacts page somehow make my contacts seem more like actual people and less like the imaginary internet friends that I'd prefer. I find this unsettling. Fix, plz.

By: flabdablet

flabdablet — Fri, 16 May 2008 20:14:42 -0800

If an uploaded profile picture makes the server barf, re-uploading a corrected picture with the same name turns the profile pic into a black square. Worked around by uploading a different picture, then the corrected one (if you have activity logs for debugging, check my sock puppet's recent update).

By: onlyconnect

onlyconnect — Tue, 27 May 2008 13:31:52 -0800

I'm not sure if anyone is still reading this thread, and this seems to be a problem only I am having, but I'm still getting logged out of metafilter regularly. I emptied my cookies but it's still happening. It doesn't appear to be necessarily linked with visiting the contacts page; I am generally getting logged out on the 3d or 4th link I click through on metafilter. I can log in and visit metafilter and ask me, but then get logged out when I go to Meta. Or I can go to Meta and MeFi, but get logged out when I try AskMe. Something like that. This doesn't happen when I use firefox at home; only on when I'm on Explorer during the day.

By: pb

pb — Tue, 27 May 2008 13:48:01 -0800

Just sent you a MeFi Mail onlyconnect, hopefully we can get this issue solved for you.

By: Kattullus

Kattullus — Fri, 30 May 2008 18:31:18 -0800

I don't know if onlyconnect's problem has been resolved or not, but I sometimes use an old computer at work which has IE6 on it and the same thing happens to me. Using other, less out-dated work computers with newer versions of IE on it doesn't result in the same issue.