Redeemer.Blog

Not everyone is happy with the "personal message" feature on the new member profiles, but I'm quite excited about them.

For a long time I've wanted to have a feature like this, modeled after the MSN messages that people change daily. I've seen funny quotes, deep insights, and everything in between the wild, outlandish, and just plain crazy in those MSN statuses.

Keeping your name off the message

A few days ago I wanted to experiment with taking out your username from the message. Instead of having to show "Redemption is wading through bugs" I want it to show "Wading through bugs.". I came up with an idea inspired by the MediaWiki method of suppressing something - prefix your personal message with a colon like so ":Wading through bugs".

By default if you type something your name shows up before it, but as soon as you prefix the ":" the system will exclude your username.

Try it out, you might like it - and you might find it opens up doors to writing more interesting messages there.

Use Sparingly, but don't let it go stale

If you change your personal message with meaningless noise all the time it loses its effectiveness. The thing I liked the most about the MSN statuses was that people didn't write about their mood as it changed throughout the day, they focussed on key issues. Most people only change their MSN status once a day or only when something big happens. Try to stick to messages that carry more meaning and you'll find that your messages will be more interesting for others and more valuable for yourself.