Metafilter Chat Feature Request

November 24, 2015 9:19 AM

Would it be possible to have a link to the profile pages of the members in the chat room? Perhaps as an additional choice when you right-click their name from the list on the righthand sidebar? (alongside "ignore" and "private chat")

Currently, if you want to look at someone in chat's profile page, you have to do a Metafilter search on another tab, and find the user's profile that way. I've been finding myself doing that frequently, as a 'get to know you' tool when it comes to conversation.

Would anyone have a problem with that feature, technical, personal, or otherwise?

posted by chambers to Feature Requests at 9:19 AM (11 comments total)

It's a nice idea. Unfortunately the software we use to make the Web chat work is an off-the-shelf thing that we didn't develop here. We don't have any plans to develop Chat any further than it is now. It could definitely be improved but it's not something we want to prioritize right now.
posted by pb (staff) at 9:22 AM on November 24, 2015

:(
posted by Going To Maine at 9:24 AM on November 24, 2015

Thanks for the explanation, pb!
posted by chambers at 9:38 AM on November 24, 2015

While we're chatting about Chat, how the heck is the "name" of the chat room determined? I've always wondered.
posted by duffell at 10:53 AM on November 24, 2015

You mean the subject line you see at the top when you log in? Only mods can change that. I hop into chat every so often to let people know about maintenance I'm doing on the server and while I'm there someone will usually say, "Hey, change the subject to [insert recent jokey topic here]."
posted by pb (staff) at 10:56 AM on November 24, 2015 [2 favorites]

Hey, pb, if a candy-chat plugin with this functionality appeared, would you use it?
posted by zamboni at 11:23 AM on November 24, 2015

If we don't have to update our version of candy to use it then we can look at it, sure. We've made modifications to candy to get it working with the way we use OpenFire so it's tough for us to jump to the latest version.

I don't remember it having a plugin system a couple years ago so I'd hate to have someone do a bunch of work on something we can't plug right in.
posted by pb (staff) at 11:33 AM on November 24, 2015

Cool! Thank you for sating my curiosity.
posted by duffell at 11:42 AM on November 24, 2015

Reminder that you can easily find a user with http://metafilter.com/username/handle where handle is the MeFite's user name. Most browsers will support spaces if they exist.

example: http://www.metafilter.com/username/terrapin
posted by terrapin at 5:31 AM on November 25, 2015 [1 favorite]

The only feature I wish it had is auto-auth if you are already logged into MeFi. I don't keep my pw handy.
posted by grumpybear69 at 7:12 AM on November 25, 2015 [1 favorite]

and if your browser doesn't like spaces, it should like %20 for a space

http://www.metafilter.com/username/Roger%20Dodger
posted by Roger Dodger at 9:57 AM on November 26, 2015