E-mail fields are rarely getting used for valid email adresses, so why not extent their functionality? They could be used for web adresses, for instance. Kareha / wakaba would only have to check if it's a somehow semantically correct adress and then make it a simple link (instead of a mailto: link) - and perhaps automatically add a http:// in front if that's missing.
I have been thinking about this, too. I have not yet convinced myself that it is a good idea, nor a bad one.
Any other opinions on this?
The option to just do away with the email field entirely (maybe just have a "sage/don't bump" checkbox instead a la Ochiba) would be nice. I keep having to tell n00bs that, despite what it says, it's a bad idea to actually put their email address in there...
Just because the Japanese have it in their scripts doesn't mean you have to. :P
If you feel like hacking yourself such a feature, it should be easy to just change the <input type="text" name="email" /> to something like <input type="checkbox" name="email" value="sage" />.
If someone actually wants to leave an email address it's easy enough to include it in their post or use it as their username.
The other thing is ID:Heaven, which is fun if you want to be 'properly' anonymous. If you just have that triggered by a 'sage' checkbox, anyone playing in the shadows can't bump a topic... it might be annoying. Thoughts?
I never understood the ID: thing anyway. What exactly is that?
WHAT THE FUCK IS WRONG WITH PUTTING INFORMATION IN THE MESSAGE FIELD OF YOUR POST RATHER THAN HIDING IT BEHIND A MALFORMATTED "MAILTO:" ANCHOR
The information put into the E-mail field does not neccessarily have to result into a mailto: anchor, that's what we are discussin here. We are also discussing here how to properly expand the functionality of an information field beyond the comment field instead of deciding how to best cripple existing functions.
The e-mail field is not a feature, it's practically a bug. All content should go into the actual post.
It's quirky and counter-intuitive, but also fun and traditional.
I guess making it a checkbox would stop the occassional 'saeg' accident, though.
It would be nice if sage, wakamark and maybe AA formatting could be selectively enabled or disabled with each post... also leaving room for any future features. What's the best way to do this?
>>7: Oh, nifty, so my IP address is being posted with each post I make? So I can't post anonymously; people can match that post's ID to the ID of one of my normal posts? This feature is evil and must be slain.
So why do some people have their ID as "Heaven"?
ID codes are rotated each day, so you can only match the during one day. ID:Heaven is what you get if you enter an E-mail address. This can be disabled or enabled as you see fit. All of this is a bit strange, and is emulation of the 0ch behaviour.
Actually, 0ch makes that an option, but I don't think it's enabled on very many 2ch boards. Most 2ch boards don't even use the ID field.
In seeing Shii's more recent "vBulletin" lookalike job with shiistyle, removing the email field I have to strongly dislike it. Even though the email field is somewhat useless except for people having a good o' sage, myself being somewhat geriatric about think the field should stay, even if it isn't used for its desired purpose. It's something that isn't being abused.
>Feel free to make some sort of logical point in support of the e-mail field. Any day now.
It's tradition! The Japanese boards have it, so it must be logical and right!! You must hate Japanese people and want to put them all in camps again if you don't like the email field!!! Why, it wouldn't be in the nebulous mythical chan spirit which we can nevereverever deviate from to not have an email field!!!!
(sigh)
This thread is VIP quality!
All content of a message should go into the actual post. Please explain how hiding the content somewhere else makes the software better.
Sometimes it is better to do things because of tradition and how a community is used to doing things a certain way. No doubt that young minds have questioned their elders as to why their culture does such redundant things. Sometimes "practically" has to take a back seat.
> All content of a message should go into the actual post. Please explain how hiding the content somewhere else makes the software better.
Software for communication is good if it allows communication. You want to limit communication, and that's fine, you favor stuff like word filters and what not, but this is not about your personal restriction preferences.
With a normal post, parts get cut off when they are too long. So you have to click somewhere if you want to read the whole post and if you don't do that then the rest of the post is hidden.
This is linked to design aspects, as well as the current email is linked to functional aspects of these forum software types. And I think it's better to think about ways to expand given possibilities than to restrict them as long as there is no actual abuse originating from them.
It's hard enough to come up with new, useful features for ways of communication, and an input field that's already there and is hardly used for the email purpose is a good candidate to try other things with it, so you don't have to add more and more dropdown menus, checkboxes and radio buttons as you add features.
The http:// stuff was one idea (and could still be done together with sage/age recognition), another could be an AA feature like on world2ch: You put aa in your email and the post automatically gets encoded to S_JIS, no matter what encoding the rest of the board has.
> All content of a message should go into the actual post.
This is also a very silly stance. Is your name part of the "actual post" or not? Is it the date? If yes, why does the same not go for the information in the email field? Is it because you have to hover over it to see its content?
I'd rather see email and URL seperated from posts.
Signing posts with information is pretty ugly.
*~Nate~*
http://www.pokeyjokess.com/ visit me!
email: [email protected]
IM: shisteJR
Ironically, MegaBBS also has a sage checkbox (and a preformat-checkbox and a fixed-width-checkbox) but still maintains the email field! :D
If >>1 is implemented, how about renaming "E-mail" to "Link"
Can I call it "Lunch"?
I'd really, really like to see the AA feature.
"aa" is quite short, those two letters might appear in some other input and trigger it by mistake... maybe use "textart" or something.
is sage broken? :(
Also, "mailto:mailto:" is not "http://"
It's supposed to add "mailto:" to strings that don't include a protocol themselves, but I don't know why it does it twice. Looking into it.
Bugfix code; problem solved. Sage should work again too.
You could make it a rule that it has to be in there as a seperated term.
Testing the http://.
Maybe replacing "E-mail" with "Subject" would be less confusing for new users?
Also, the (Replies) links everywhere are quite distracting... maybe line them up next to [Del]
Maybe drop the brackets around (Replies) and then somehow set it to background color unless hovered over, active or visited?
A short breakdown what the "Link:" field can / could be used for:
Combinations should always be possible (Such as "sage" and "aa" in the same post).