Show recipient in "sent" personal messages

[TechnoBear]

I really like the improvements to the PM system, except for sent messages, where we’re pretty much back to this issue:

Show recipient/sender in PM list

In the Profile message list, there is nothing to indicate who the other party involved in the PM is. Nor is there any filter option, as there is in vBulletin, so as soon as you accumulate more than a few PMs, it becomes very difficult to sort out which is which and find a particular message. This seems to me to be the one place where showing an avatar would actually be really helpful - and it’s the one place where there are none.

At the moment, messages display my avatar (maybe unnecessarily; it’s my sent box, after all), but do not display the recipient unless they reply. Most messages I send are moderation messages, where the vast majority go unanswered. So my “sent” box has hundreds of messages with only my avatar, and no easy way to distinguish one from another.

Recipient should always be shown for sent messages, IMHO, regardless of replies.

[zogstrip]

Where would you show the recipient avatar?

I’m not sure I like it being always there since it would be the only place where the topic list would behave this way…

[TechnoBear]

Where it always used to be shown until this recent change. In the place now occupied by my avatar.

Surely the name of the recipient is the most important factor in any messaging system, whether PMs or e-mail. This is really not at all helpful or informative:

And it goes on like that, screen after screen, with very few replies.

[Mittineague]

the only place where the topic list would behave this way…

It is also the only place where a topic has a specific intended recipient.

I tend to be more visual than I realized until recently (Apr 1 spinning clown avatars) so seeing custom “to” avatars would probably be the quickest recognition cue for me, when they’re custom - I think membername could work and having that information there would be a big improvement

Currently the layout is
message title - message creator (in this case, self) - number of replies - age of last post

I think treating the intended message recipient as a kind of category in terms of layout could work
Maybe
membername - message title - message creator (in this case, self) - number of replies - age of last post
or
message title - membername - message creator (in this case, self) - number of replies - age of last post

[Mittineague]

I just did a quick look, hoping for a quick CSS approach. But no “recipient” in any class values

<tr style="background-color: rgba(209, 240, 255, 0);" data-topic-id="120" class="ember-view topic-list-item" id="ember4518">
  <td class="main-link clearfix" colspan="1">
    <a href="/t/test-message/120/1" class="title visited">Test Message</a>
    <span class="topic-post-badges">
  </span>
  </td>
  <td class="posters">
    <a href="/users/mittineague" data-user-card="Mittineague" class="latest single">
      <img alt="" src="/user_avatar/localhost/mittineague/25/18_1.png" class="avatar latest single" title="Mittineague - Original Poster, Most Recent Poster" height="25" width="25">
    </a>
  </td>
<td class="num posts-map posts heatmap-" title="This topic has 0 replies">
    <a href="" class="posts-map badge-posts heatmap-">
      <span class="number" title="0">0</span>
    </a>
  </td>
<td class="num views ">
    <span class="number" title="this topic has been viewed 1 times">1</span>
  </td>
  <td class="num age activity" title="First post: April 12, 2016 1:41pm
Last post: April 12, 2016 1:41pm">
    <a href="/t/test-message/120/1">
      <span class="relative-date" data-time="1460482882000" data-format="tiny">2m</span>
    </a>
  </td>
</tr>

It is in the JSON, but maybe not so easy to work with.
There is an array
post_stream.posts.details.allowed_users.username
So it might be possible to remove the OP using
post_stream.posts.details.created_by.username

Or if there were only ever one recipient, you could go directly to allowed_users array key 1 not reliable

Which brings up another problem, what to do when there are multiple recipients? Things could get very cramped.

I can’t recall ever seeing <span class="topic-post-badges"> used an any messages, but maybe it is at times.

Anyway, as a rough mock-up, maybe something like this using that span?

[codinghorror]

@zogstrip I think she has a point here, that display is quite redundant with the same self-repeated avatar over and over…

[sam]

I follow, but it would be a fairly complicated change. Also, need to handle cases where the “to” address is targeted at a group or there are 20 different users allowed in the PM.

I get the problem, just can not think of a trivial way of improving this.

[cpradio]

I know this doesn’t help mobile or those mouse inclined, but I think showing the first recipient in the group or showing a group icon/avatar would work? Maybe fa-users: Font Awesome Icons with a hover over list of the first X recipients? (the part that isn’t mobile friendly).

Mobile will at least have the group icon/avatar to signify it is multiple recipients.

[Mittineague]

I’m still not clear as to why desktop and mobile topic lists use different identical templates.
But I’m thinking it could be doable using the plugin-outlet.

[Ellibereth]

For the latter two cases - couldn’t it be visually the same as what it looks like now when you send a personal message to several people and they respond (with multiple avatars). When the group goes over what the maximum the UI can display in terms of avatars maybe just add some sort of … symbol at the end.

Regardless, a fix for this would be super useful for my community too. We’ve taken to just asking for people to give a short response to pms they recieve even when it’d usually be unnecessary.