the concept of private messages and grabbing someone’s attention needs to change to adapt to an interface where two physical individuals can interact with one another in separate zones without the website linking them.
maybe some twitter-esque equivalent of ‘@’ where including some kind of command or markdown like ‘@x.y’ would cause a user to get a message prompt, similar but distinct to the Inbox. so if this were implemented, i could hypothetically type ‘@meta.rodentplan’ as a way of flagging myself, except it would be used more to invite a particular user on a zone to weigh in on whatever is being discussed.
necroposting has a stigmata in a lot of forum culture but if there were tools available to use to keep pre-existing conversations relevant this might change (as opposed to a system like LUE or reddit where the front page was basically whatever was ‘hot’, unless it was a) a circlejerk b) interesting enough to trigger 5,000 actual posts.) this would be helpful because otherwise we run the risk of eventually accumulating a certain amount of posting mass wherein the sheer accessibility of relatively ancient information starts prompting us to tackle more difficult questions like archiving and mass deletion tools and permissions (from a developmental growth perspective, a decade is massive regardless of who you are) .
at a later point i would be willing to draw up some rough ideas ideas for what the interface notifications would look like( functionally similar to the inbox, but more like a list of messages that basically would look like: ‘on zone ‘X’, ‘Y’ invited you to weigh in on their message in topic ‘Z”) , but it felt important to go ahead and get the idea out there.
