Labels are confusing

What happened to the old-fashioned idea of putting a label on something that actually tells you what it is? I have realised that this is a major reason why I sometimes struggle to do what I want on the new site, and I’ll bet I’m not the only one.

Here’s an example, from the MenChats Guide:

“Click Groups to browse all chat rooms”.

A group of what? Of people with similar interests, presumably, but the button is for browsing and choosing a chat room, so wouldn’t it make sense to label it “Chat Rooms”?

Another one:

“Click on Messages to view your Private Conversations”.

OK, then label the button “Private Conversations”!

This is the right way to assign a label. What is it for? What’s in the tin? If it contains tuna, put “Tuna” on the outside of the tin. Simple!

“Message” is a very general term; someone new to this site would probably expect it to mean anything you say to another user, possibly private, possibly not, and not necessarily part of a stored list. A “Whisper” (which is an example of a good name BTW) is a kind of message, and so is a “Mention” (which I would prefer to be called “Mention publicly” or “Shout”, to emphasise that it’s not private, but I have got used to it by now.)

If someone in the room posted “Hi, how is everyone today?”, I might respond via Mention “Doing well tks”, and I think of that as a message, it’s a piece of information I don’t particularly need to be kept as a record. If I wanted to ask him “Would you care to fuck” and he responds “Wednesday would be good”, then I definitely want it private and I probably want to be able to later see what we said to each other. That’s a conversation, it’s more than just a message.

And a piece of positive feedback from me for a change: I do like the fact that I can continue the private conversation even when the other is offline and they see it when they return. This is most useful.