Backlog? - Modify Sharing Icon Function in Forum

At present the ‘envelope’ icon pops the user out of the Forum and opens an email document on the tab.

[better explained here]

I suggest this should instead open a Message within the forum.

I note that the envelope icon in this share function is nearly identical to the envelope icon for sending messages within the forum. I found this confusing and was also frustrated to find that my tab was now in the email program outside the forum.

If I wished to email it would have been simply for me to used the Copy icon and carry the topic URL to my email service to paste.

GENERAL RULE: I’m thinking we should be keeping activity in the Forum not bouncing users out.

@richjensen which envelope icon? I use the link icon and it seems to work ok for me on Android? …see above.

The envelope icon is used for my DM thread tab:

Under that icon and tab I think it would be useful to have options to sort or filter the display of DM message threads by person, date or topic.

…and maybe have a more prominent ‘New Message’ button

…BUT

I think we need to remember that a community platform should be about sharing and transparency, so we always need to ask ourselves “Does this thread really need to be private?” …and reserve DMs for strictly private 1:1s.

The great thing is that a DM is just a post, so it’s easy to turn it into a public thread if you change your mind.

If there are private groups or categories that need to be set up, let’s do that, and be transparent on what they are for.

@richjensen can you take a screenshot of the envelope icons you’re talking about? I’m not clear what you’re referring to

If I hit the ‘time of post’ for your message [ie “25m”] to select it

the URL of the message is captured in the pop-up [ie "Post #4]

There is an ‘envelope’ icon in the bottom left of the pop-up.

I was thinking I could click this to generate an ‘in the forum’ message, a way to send this URL to another Forum user to get their attention here or solicit their comment.

Instead, if you click on the envelope it opens my external email client (gmail) in the tab.

If I wanted to send an email instead of an ‘in forum’ message this would be efficient but that often isn’t what I want to do.

Having the tab switch from forum to email client is disorienting… ‘where did the forum go?’

I did see that I can ‘back scroll’ to get back in the forum, not that hard…

but still, shouldn’t the priority be to keep users in the forum? Shouldn’t internal messaging be prioritized over external email?

If I wished to email, I could simply take advantage of the copy button, open an email tab (or drop it in if it is already open), etc.

Also confusing because this same icon means ‘internal message’ when accessing forum messaging from my usual forum profile commands. Here it means: send external email.

Seems sub-optimum. :slight_smile:

[low priority, just making user notes as they occur]