Implemented [Suggestion] Personal Conversations / showing Avatar of person initiated the conversation

[erich37]

when clicking onto "Inbox / Show all", then we see the list of all Personal Conversations we have had.

I was just trying to find a certain Private-Conversation in my Inbox.

It took some time to look for this, as the subject-title of most of my messages are very similar.
Also at most of those, my own Avatar is showing-up - as I assume it is always showing the Avatar of the person who started a specific Conversation.

As I have started most of the Conversations, it is showing my own Avatar on most of my Inbox, which does not help to find a specific Conversation.

BTW: looking onto the Inbox-Drop-Down, it is also showing my own Avatar. It does not help to see my own Avatar there, it would help in a big way to see the avatars of the users who are talking with myself.

Suggestions:
For the Inbox-Drop-Down-box, I would suggest to show the avatars of people who I am talking with, but not show the Avatar of myself (just because I had initiated the Personal conversations).

For the Inbox-list, I would suggest you show the Avatars of ALL people who participated in a certain conversation.

 

[Paul B]

the developers will not agree, but I see this issue as being a bug

A bug by definition is something which is unintended, causing the software to malfunction.
As this is by design then it can't be considered a bug.

 

[dieketzer]

whether the design serves its intent (which i assume is to be user-friendly and intuitive) is certainly questionable.

feedback from users makes a few issues clear to me:

1. users do not immediately draw the connection between 'conversations' and 'private messages'.
perhaps they could be called 'private conversations' on the inbox page or whatnot.

2. when viewing the inbox it is not readily apparent which conversation is which, particularly if you initiated the conversation and were the last to post to it.
perhaps the icons of all participants can be included in the 'threadlist'?

3. quite unlike the alert popup,
the inbox overlay/popup will feature your own avatar rather than the last person to reply. once you have a couple of conversations going this becomes unwieldy.
perhaps the icon of the first new post could be used instead, as it is done in the alert popup

yes, i am aware i can alter templates. yes, people here probably arent confused by the conversation system. but it seems that when it comes to the garden variety forum user, it isnt as obvious as we may believe.

 

[erich37]

still needs to be fixed in order to name it "Gold" or "Final Release"............

 

[Tessa]

Perhaps a small notation field could be added after the conversation title. A forum user would be able to edit it to whatever notation you wanted, participants names, topic or w/e (for your eyes only). Almost like a second title line for personal use only, with a character slot limit.
I still prefer the idea of labels or groups for organization since I'm familiar with it (gmail uses it lol)

 

[eod]

I didn't get that a conversation was a PM at first....

is there a character limit for conversation/PM postings? If so, where do you set that?

 

[Andy.N]

Has any changes to the PC system been done as suggested?

 

[Paul B]

Not yet.

The latest release (1.0.1) was a maintenance release with no new features other than the IP.Board importer.

 

[Alluidh]

But it wolud be nice to get this kind of feature in 1.1. With a lot of conversations it is very helpful to see the initiated member in the overview

 

[erich37]

are we going to see any improvement to this in XF 1.1 ?

 

[dieketzer]

i hope so.
unfortunately, i think k&m believe things are fine as they are.
the avatar issue as well as the fact that people can reply to conversations that they are the only participant in are two huge problems imo

 

[erich37]

i hope so.
unfortunately, i think k&m believe things are fine as they are.
the avatar issue as well as the fact that people can reply to conversations that they are the only participant in are two huge problems imo

is there an avatar issue? I think I have read about it, but is this a real issue? Not sure which avatar-issue you mean?

BTW: I think there should be also an option to allow attachments for certain "user groups" within Private Conversations.

 

[dieketzer]

is there an avatar issue? I think I have read about it, but is this a real issue? Not sure which avatar-issue you mean?

you started the thread!

 

[erich37]

you started the thread!

lol, oh yeah this avatar-issue you mean
I thought there is another one..... my bad.

 

[thunderup]

That avatar "issue" really does need to be fixed.. It only makes sense that the LAST person to reply in the convo (no matter how many people are in it) should have their avatar showing!

Isn't that kind of obvious? XD

 

[dieketzer]

That avatar "issue" really does need to be fixed.. It only makes sense that the LAST person to reply in the convo (no matter how many people are in it) should have their avatar showing!

Isn't that kind of obvious? XD

i agree.
if k&m believe the current system is ideal, why dont they adopt it for the alert queue? just image how great it would be if all your alerts showed the avatar of the thread starter rather than the avatar of the most recent unread poster

 

[Morgain]

Well now my Convos are piling up it's becoming impossible to find which is which.
I agreed with the position a year ago that three vwere more important things to do but now so much else is so comfortab;le and intuitive this is really standing out as a sore thumb.

If it's harder to display avatars then just show the usernames of Convo Participants. Then I can do CTRL+F on the page.

I'm not sure about showing the last to reply.
That's OK on an Alert basis but if I'm checking back a bit later I might be the last to reply so I still can't see who the other Participant/s is/are.

This is also somewhat affected by the type of user. A sociable initiator user has LOTS of Convos they have initiated. That means seeing your own avatar all down the list - pretty uninformative! Yet that's just the kind of busy sociable contributing user I want to encourage so I want things comfy for them.

 

[Syndol]

I have created an add-on which might meet your needs:
Conversation Participants

 

[erich37]

rather sad that this needs an add-on and is not properly implemented into XF core by default.

 

[Grover]

I am taking a break from XenForo for the coming time, but thanks for all the mockups that have been posted in line with the above suggestion. I just wanted to let the developers now that this really 'should' be in when XF becomes Gold. I just had a real-life practical example/experience with this issue... I wanted to look for a conversation I had with someone (in this case Kier, but it doesn't matter... /namedropping mode off ) and... I just couldn't find it ! As erich37 (TS) and many people have pointed out indeed... it is just impossible to see with which person(s) you had a conversation in the overview... this really needs improvement to make the PC system pleasurable to use. Thanks.

My break's over and so I delved into my Private Conversations area for the first time in years and (logically, because no improvements were being made on the PC system so far) again it took me too much time to find an important PC back. From all the areas in XenForo it looks a bit like the PC area is quite underdeveloped. I am looking forward to improvements on this (otherwise great unique system compared to other forum systems) in Xenforo 1.2

 

[zooki]

OMG! (again people Like the original Post so that it gets relevant attention ) ---Personally, I can not spend 25 quid on an add-on JUST to see who I am having conversations with! I have a lot of conversations and it is impossible to know who I spoke with! or to find messages. If it is difficult for me, as a seasoned admin and computer scientist, I am pretty sure it is for our normal users too.

I am sure Syndol* add-on is really good, if you want to buy it, do so, but the following should definitely be in the core >>>

Easily see conversation participants. Conversation participants will now be visible in both the conversation list and the inbox popup menu. In the conversation list, the participants may be displayed as either usernames or avatars, and can easily be switched via a toggle. An overlay with all the participants is also available. Should a conversation have more participants than can be displayed, a '... and x more' link will be available to you which opens an overlay with a list of all the participants.