How do I send a PM to someone

from GalCiv2 Forums

Actually I know how to send a PM to someone as long as I can find a post or reply from them. That used to be easy but now seems to be pretty much impossible unless you happen to precisely know a thread they've replied to.

For example I'm trying to PM AF_Ronin and Freeelancer. Search is useless these days and even using goggle to do a site search isn't particularly helpful. I know these two have responded in one of the MVL threads somewhere but these are all very long threads and there are a number of them.

Can anyone tell me a simple, easy and reliable way to get to a arbitrary members profile so that you can send them a PM?

4,963 views 5 replies
Reply #1 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
I agree - and it can be very frustrating. There is no facility to originate a generic pm, you have to locate a person where they have posted first. The latter is not always feasible (may not have posted for a while) or its fiddly to find a post due to the search problems.

The problem could be resolved by allowing the sender to insert any name in a pm "to" box, but at present you cant it will only display a read only version of a posters name. I would guess there is a reason they did it that way, but I find it hard to fathom out what, as its not exactly hard to provide, so programmer resource/time etc is not a factor.

Regards
Zy
Reply #2 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
Probably a pretty small help, but if you know one of their metaverse characters and can get from there to their meta profile, you can skip from there to the PM page directly via this URL (you can manually make a bookmark of it to make it easy):

javascript:var u=location.href; location.href = "https://forums.galciv2.com/pm/new/" + u.substr(60);
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Reply #3 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
javascript:var u=location.href; location.href = "https://forums.galciv2.com/pm/new/" + u.substr(60);
End of quote

I tried to create a bookmark using this and I get "The protocol "javascript" does not have a registered program. Do you want to keep this target anyway?" to which I reply yes. However surprisingly enough it did indeed work.

I guess a small help is better than none but still this is a very circuitous method.

The only way I know how to do this would be to first search under forum stats to be able to search by user name instead of character name which are often very different. From there you could get to their metaverse profile and then apply this magic link. A three step process at a minimum except that it seems that since the forum "upgrade" most newer members are not even included in the forum stats list so for many users you're simply SOL.

So is this ever going to be addressed?

The google site search can seem to find specific threads that have very specific and unique search terms but it's absolutely hopeless when trying to find a post or reply by a specific user.
Reply #4 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
It's hard to say if the limitations on the PM system are there for a reason (spam issues, server load, etc, etc), or just because the functionality is pretty bare-bones. If nothing else, this can go on the list of things to look at along with the metaverse during the 2.0 work.
Reply #5 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
If it can be sorted amongst the (doubtless ever growing) priority list, that would be great. I suspect there are a good many who would find it very useful.

Regards
Zy