Topic: A useful feature.

Hey guys. love the site. just wanted to suggest one feature i thought would be nice. since the community here is so close, a lot of us have really become friends. the thing is, it's hard to have a one-on-one chat with somebody on the site. a lot of people here have a backloggery... i don't. i have a facebook... a lot of people here don't. if i want to talk to, say, pixelman, i've got to start a thread (which takes up space on the site) that says, "pixelman, come get in the chatroom so we can talk." that just seems like a waste to me. could we add a feature where a user can view your profile, and then attatch a personal message to you on it? that way, i can just go to pixelman's profile page, and say, "hey, pixel, just wanted to tell you that pixeldragon you made for me is absolutely amazing. thanks again!" or whatever it is i've got to say. you think we could add this?

Seems like a good idea.

you've got a point there, but it would probably be hard to do that sort of thing. It would be better if you just used Email to thank someone instead of opening some personal chat thing also. However, I'm not part of NL in ANY way, so I can't say what happens and what doesn't. But you do have a good idea. I can say that.

Could always use something like Yahoo Messenger or exchange emails if your wanting to talk to the particular person.

@V8 and Dante: i could use emails, or yahoo, or whatever, but it's still iffy. the only thing EVERYONE on this site has in common is a NL account. and i don't mean a personal chatroom, just like posting on someone's wall or sending them a message on facebook. nothing live, just being able to give someone a message on Nintendo Life that no one else has to see, unless they also go to that person's page (or you could make it totally private, like a facebook message, but either way, it works for me).

Good point bro2dragons. That is truly the one link and bond everyone here does share. So I will say good idea.

thanks, DHD

@New Age: there is a NL chatroom (check my sig), but you can never guarantee that a specific person you want to talk to is even online, let alone in the chat, so if you want to talk to someone specific about something specific, you've got to start a topic saying, "Yo, PhoenixSage, where you at, man?", or try to track down the last thread he posted on and say, "Hey, Phoenix, get in the chat pronto." it would be so much easier just to type in the search bar "PhoenixSage" and then click the link to his profile, then have a box at the bottom where i can drop Feenie a personal message.

Good idea, it could have lots of uses. I remember Corbie or someone saying that it could be useful to contact people more privately about their comments and posts.

This is the only forum I've been on that doesn't have a private messaging system (or at least, not one I've been able to locate), which I thought was a bit odd. Having one would be very useful indeed for a whole host of reasons.

Guys,

We've always considered these kind of ideas and we've usually left things out for a reason - generally we don't believe in re-inventing the wheel. People can chat to each other using a variety of IM systems, MSN, AIM, ICQ etc... they can message each other using email etc.. so it seems alittle strange to spend time writing something that already exists. There's also the moderation side of things - if you guys start arguing / spamming in private messages we'd never see it

Anyway, we're committed to adding some real-time chat to the site as you know, it's likely that could extend to private messaging (live).

We'll see what works

Thanks, aNt. I know you guys are all working hard all the time to make NL great. i'm not wanting to add to your workload, just suggesting an addition i'd like to be thought about. but yeah, thanks, again. keep up the good work.

I think the PM might be a good idea, because a lot of people may not want to post their email/screen name/facebook into a public thread or chatroom to exchange with someone they want to speak with privately. Currently, that would really be the only way to get the contact information. A PM feature would be useful, if for nothing else, to exchange those things with certain people privately.

While I understand the feeling of redundancy, there's still a call for PM's for some of us. I'm glad you're at least not totally writing off the idea, aNt.

So add a report private message button then... Nintendo Life users clearly would like some pm system.

Also another alternative would be a nudge feature where you can send a pre-set message to a specific user, you could pick from a few different messages like "Join me in chat now" or errr, well that's the only one I can think of but even that alone would help.

It would also be very Nintendoish in that it restricts user to user communication to a minimum

I like that idea a lot, Stevie.

Hey guys. love the site. just wanted to suggest one feature i thought would be nice.

Were these forums written from scratch?
Or did NLife purchase forum software like vBulletin?

It seems like most forum software is purchased (instead of re-inventing the wheel) and include private messaging and a search feature. And multi-quotes. And a reply toolbar.

PMs should've been a feature from the start.