Help me think

I've got a rough idea for something, but I need help expanding it into something that's suggestion worthy.



I was thinking of a link in your log-in area that lists how many of your friends are currently online ((The site registers someone as online if they've loaded an SC page in the past 10 min)). If you click it, a drop down box appears allowing you to send them a PM.

The idea I had comes from this page. Click on any of the usernames and it'll come up with a "Send PM" box.

Anyone got anything to add/change?

I think it would be better if it just came up with your complete list of friends instead of just the online ones.

What I'm getting is that it's just a quicker and easier way of sending PM's to people.. So what if you quickly want to PM someone who isn't online?

If going by that, why not separate it into two parts? Online friends being pinned to a section at the top of the drop down list, and offline further down.

Yeah that sounds good to me

Sounds good. Also please come up with something better than the "Add your friend codes and gamertags". I've been looking at that for far too long. It isn't new.

It was going to be replaced with "Daily Challenges Completed: 1 / 5" eventually... but you know how the Roots are. :/

As long as it wouldnt decrease the activity in the forums.
That would be a worry for me!

Vicar said:

It was going to be replaced with "Daily Challenges Completed: 1 / 5" eventually... but you know how the Roots are. :/

Yea, they grow out of the bottom of trees and trip you.

Vicar said:

If going by that, why not separate it into two parts? Online friends being pinned to a section at the top of the drop down list, and offline further down.

I'd say maybe have a list of the online friends, and then a link at the bottom saying something like "See All" or something, which links to a page listing all of your friends, online and offline, where you could also just click a button to PM them.
That way, for people with a crap ton of friends, the list isn't excessively long.

balthiersbit said:

As long as it wouldnt decrease the activity in the forums.
That would be a worry for me!

I don't think forum activity, or lack of activity, would decrease too much. If at all. If a PM is necessary, people will use it now, already. They're for private discussion.
The forums are for group discussions. And most people probably prefer that, just because it's better in general. Anything meant for privacy will already be PMed now.

In xetaboards private PMs can be read by Admins, I don't know if that it is only root and any Admin but I would think that it should be an option. Not to be super powerful and invade privacy but also in case someone is being bullied and stalked online.
You guys know I just want to take care of you all as opposed to control you.

It wouldn't do you much good either way. Admins on Zetaboards control everything. Admins on SC only control the Forums/Teams.

Actually, now that I think about it...
When PMs were first implemented on this site, didn't they -not- work?
Or am I thinking of somewhere else?

I actually don't know if they've been 'fixed'....
I've been gone for too long! D:

But either way, I don't think having this system would decrease activity on the forums.
There are plenty of forums that have PMing, and both the forum and the messaging are used plenty.
Plus, the few people that are halfway active on this site -want- the forums to be active. So I don't think they'd ruin the activity levels themselves.

Just list all your friends and make the currently online's green or something.

Also I request for the "hide online" thing to be removed.

It's pretty worthless.

I, personally, don't think the "hide online" feature is worth anything.
It seems completely pointless to me.

But there may be some people who really like having that ability. And it's not really hurting anything to at least have the option to use it.

The hide online thing? For the forums? It doesn't even hide you, last I knew.

It doesn't work.

If you have it checked and are online, doesn't it just say Offline?

It -still- doesn't work? Are you kidding me?
I left the site back when the feature was first added...
Came back to the site a couple of weeks ago.

I assumed it would have been fixed by now. xD

In that case, yeah. May as well take off the entire feature.

Or make it so that offline people actually have the offline tag.

I would assume that keeping the feature, but fixing it, would be the best thing to do. That way the people who want to use it still can.
Though I don't understand why anyone would want to use the feature at all. Unless they're on 24/7 and don't want others to know that they never leave the house. :p