how to lookup user pages by user name

December 13, 2004 10:35 AM

I used to be able to lookup user pages by user name, with the URL "http://www.metafilter.com/username.mefi/mathowie" but now, when I put that in, it resolves to "http://www.metafilter.com/user/1" I know this has been mentioned before, but I can't find the discussion; is there any way to lookup a user's page if you only know their user name (and not their user number), and you can't find a comment they made (in order to just click on their name)?
posted by jonson to Feature Requests at 10:35 AM (16 comments total)

I don't understand your issue. As you said, your name formed URL resolves you to the correct page, so what is the problem? Why do you want the URL to stay in the form with the user name, once it's figured out who you want to see?

Also, search has a search by user feature, so it's typically pretty easy to find a comment to click on if you really want to.
posted by willnot at 10:45 AM on December 13, 2004

You already found it: replace "mathowie" with the username of your choice, and it redirects to their user page by user number.

http://www.metafilter.com/username.mefi/mendel
http://www.metafilter.com/username.mefi/jonson
etc.
posted by mendel at 10:46 AM on December 13, 2004

I can change it back, but I don't understand why this is a problem. If you want to find huggybear666's user page, just go to /username.mefi/huggybear666 and it will take you to that, even though the final URL may change.
posted by mathowie (staff) at 10:50 AM on December 13, 2004

It's easier to look up multiple user profiles if the URL remains in the /username.mefi/ format.
posted by quasistoic at 10:53 AM on December 13, 2004

I'm just gonna start referring to people by their user numbers. I suggest you do the same, 14271.

Yeah, I don't understand what the problem is here either.
posted by DrJohnEvans at 10:55 AM on December 13, 2004

Ooh that would be a fun April Fools or Halloween gag, Matt. Just display user numbers for a day.
posted by scarabic at 11:07 AM on December 13, 2004

maybe the default should just be the name and not the user numbers. the usernumber default display does tend to fuel some degree of elitism.
posted by norm at 11:52 AM on December 13, 2004

scarabic: it would only be fun if by "fun" you mean "1 would be deleting MeTa bug posts all goddamn day".
posted by Plutor at 12:13 PM on December 13, 2004

I can change it back

what problem were you fixing by changing it in the first place?
posted by quonsar at 12:21 PM on December 13, 2004

what problem were you fixing by changing it in the first place?

It saves doing the username->id query twice.
posted by Armitage Shanks at 12:57 PM on December 13, 2004

what problem were you fixing by changing it in the first place?

I needed people's user IDs for accounts that had problems with paypal.

I'll change it back and make a page for my own lookups.

maybe the default should just be the name and not the user numbers

I would have done it that way if I planned ahead, but some people have all sorts of illegal characters that conflict with URLs (like forward slashes) that would make that impossible to get to their page.
posted by mathowie (staff) at 12:58 PM on December 13, 2004

Fixed back to normal.
posted by mathowie (staff) at 1:13 PM on December 13, 2004

I'm just gonna start referring to people by their user numbers. I suggest you do the same, 14271.

I'm gonna rejoin Mefi when I can have #24601.
posted by tracicle at 1:24 PM on December 13, 2004

I'd want to be #6. And it's still free too! (Hmm, #6 is free. That isn't quite right somehow). Now all I have to do is build a time machine or bribe Matt.
posted by fvw at 2:19 PM on December 13, 2004

Man, I'm stupid. The only reason this was a problem for me was that I had the initial link bookmarked, and I'd call up the bookmark & change the name in the URL from mathowie to whatever user I wanted to lookup, but I couldn't do that anymore, since the mathowie page would resolve to the number URL. It never even occurred to me to just type in the base URL manually. Sorry anyone went to any trouble... stupid jonson!
posted by jonson at 3:00 PM on December 13, 2004

Damn, jonson, I did the exact same thing, but when I asked this question... it... sob... never got answered!
posted by interrobang at 4:51 PM on December 13, 2004