Link user name to profile on inbox? December 7, 2008 2:42 PM   Subscribe

[ICanHazPony?] Can the author's name please link to their profile on the MeMail Inbox?
posted by disillusioned to Feature Requests at 2:42 PM (22 comments total)

That's not a bad idea at all. I've often been all "aw man I have to CLICK twice to reply to someone?!"
posted by jessamyn (staff) at 2:52 PM on December 7, 2008


We purposely don't do that so you don't accidentally leave the "mail" area by clicking on it. If you click into the message, you will see the username hyperlinked. We did that in the hopes you've read the message before you send something back to them (if you were clicking usernames to send new messages).
posted by mathowie (staff) at 2:53 PM on December 7, 2008


Is [a href="xxx" target="whatever"] deprecated yet?
posted by stavrosthewonderchicken at 4:22 PM on December 7, 2008


I like getting who before what. Kind of a lot.
posted by Ambrosia Voyeur at 4:41 PM on December 7, 2008


Why?
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 4:48 PM on December 7, 2008


stavrosthewonderchicken: "Is [a href="xxx" target="whatever"] deprecated yet?"

The target attribute isn't deprecated in either HTML 4.01 or the HTML 5 draft. Although it is included in the HTML 4.01 "loose" (aka transitional) DTD, not the strict DTD. The strict DTD's header has a comment that says "This is HTML 4.01 Strict DTD, which excludes the presentation attributes and elements that W3C expects to phase out as support for style sheets matures." This implies in my mind some sort of pre-deprecatedness.
posted by Plutor at 4:51 PM on December 7, 2008


Why?

Because if someone sends me a memail, and I don't know who the hell they are, I would rather develop a little opinion of them aside from what they choose to say to me, before I read it, than after. I would rather not have my entire opinion of them predicated on that content.

I certainly wouldn't be confused by the fact that the linked username goes to the profile and not into the message window, and without clicking through to the message, to go to a particular user's profile is kind of a lot of effort.

Of course, I know I can click on the username before I read the memail, but I've already opened the envelope and

DIAF

was already right there, and the mystery, the romance, the tentative beginnings of the relationship have just been ruined. Put the link on the outside of the envelope!
posted by Ambrosia Voyeur at 4:54 PM on December 7, 2008


I bow to brilliance.
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 5:40 PM on December 7, 2008


We could change it so if you click on the username instead of the subject it will just always list the mefimail content as being "DIAF".
posted by cortex (staff) at 6:16 PM on December 7, 2008


I support this pony. I hate getting emails and thinking "who the hell are YOU?"
posted by desjardins at 6:24 PM on December 7, 2008


People who get MefiMail must be special.
posted by An Infinity Of Monkeys at 7:18 PM on December 7, 2008


I certainly wouldn't be confused by the fact that the linked username goes to the profile and not into the message window, and without clicking through to the message, to go to a particular user's profile is kind of a lot of effort.

If you think of typical online email programs, the entire line like so is one giant link to the message:

___________________________________________________________
mathowie          Re: usernames in MeFi Mail       Dec 7, 2008 10:14 AM
___________________________________________________________


We found in early testing that people clicked on anything hyperlinked assuming it'd go to the message, and clicking the usernames was kind of an unexpected thing, so we removed the link on it so the message was the only link.

I mean I hear you that yeah, you say the username going somewhere else isn't a problem but I found myself tripping up on this constantly after a decade of using web-based email. On the order of half the time I got messages I accidentally ended up on their profile pages thinking "what the hell just happened, where's the message?!"
posted by mathowie (staff) at 7:36 PM on December 7, 2008


Maybe you could put a teeny head icon or text thingy beside the username [profile] that links to the profile and targets a new tab....
posted by stavrosthewonderchicken at 8:05 PM on December 7, 2008


People who get MefiMail must be special.

Maybe if you weren't pointing a gun in your profile pic...
posted by Alvy Ampersand at 9:27 PM on December 7, 2008


He may have shot me in the head, Alvy, there are a lot of people and monkeys who wave guns around in their profile pictures and somebody shot me in my profile picture. Who it is I don't know. All those gun-wavers are under suspicion.
posted by Kattullus at 9:52 PM on December 7, 2008 [2 favorites]


Just some data, I have no opinion on this subject.

Yahoo Classic is like this:
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
mathowie          Re: usernames in MeFi Mail       Dec 7, 2008 10:14 AM    1k
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------


Google Mail is like this:
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
mathowie          Re: usernames in MeFi Mail       Dec 7, 2008 10:14 AM
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

posted by philomathoholic at 10:52 PM on December 7, 2008


More data: firefox navigates to example.com now; it didn't used to.
posted by philomathoholic at 10:57 PM on December 7, 2008


More data: firefox navigates to example.com now; it didn't used to.

It used to be it didn't even resolve. According to Wikipedia the domains started to resolve in '2008'.
posted by delmoi at 11:21 PM on December 7, 2008


No, it says "as of 2008", they resolve. It doesn't say that was the first time they did so.
posted by Plutor at 5:56 AM on December 8, 2008


Netcraft says it was running a web server in July 2007, but vaguely recall seeing it was replying to requests a while before that, too.
posted by Plutor at 6:05 AM on December 8, 2008


Here's a comment about the text on example.com, circa August 2004.
posted by Plutor at 6:07 AM on December 8, 2008


stavrosthewonderchicken seems to have a nice solution. But I'd rather it didn't link to example.com.
posted by le morte de bea arthur at 1:19 PM on December 9, 2008


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