I needed to DM a security bug to @LemmyDev@mastodon.social, but the Lemmy UI gives no way to freely compose a DM and manually enter an address. Users are expected to find a hyperlinked user click on it, and then click “send message”. The search functionality failed to find anything when I queried @LemmyDev@mastodon.social.
But the capability is there for advanced users who discover that they can click on the user of an external account and then mimic the URL format to manually enter an account.
#lemmyBug
I think the main pro of it being this way, is that when you do send a message, it goes through.
If you could type any username the message might not actually make it to that user, since not all federated communities are actually federated with each other.
For example, you can’t message anyone from Lemmy.nsfw
It’s a good point. Essentially it means this bug is potentially hiding other bugs (such as non-existent recipients acting as a black hole and a bug whereby the sending node does not inform users when they attempt to interact with a defederated node). And if yes then they should fix those other bugs before expanding the utility of the UI.