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The water cooler on our site theme doesn't currently act as a link to our main chatroom, The Water Cooler. This is clearly unacceptable!!!

Obviously this should act as a hyperlink to our chatroom to match user expectation.

WaterCooler

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  • 1
    Awesome idea! I think we should go for it :)
    – DarkCygnus Mod
    Mar 12, 2019 at 0:52
  • 4
    Admittedly, I've tried clicking it a couple of times in the past... thinking it would do SOMETHING. When I glimpse it, I half-expect the bubbles to move too.
    – user34587
    Mar 12, 2019 at 8:15

2 Answers 2

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Thanks for the fun idea! Unfortunately, it's not possible to do. It's not a bad idea - to quote the response I got when asking about this:

I think clicking it is a fine idea, but it's just not built that way.

The thing is, the water cooler in the footer is just a background image. It's not an active element that can be clicked.

One of the goals of making the site themes more similar was to make it easier for us to roll out changes to the network without breaking dozens of site themes in the process. Every custom code element we create makes those bugs more likely ... a sort of death of 1000 cuts, if you will. Fun ideas are great and if we can implement them without too much risk, we'll do that - hence why we were happy to add the water cooler to the footer image at all. This may change in the future if we find another way of doing it but, for now, we're going to leave it as-is.

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  • On a technical level, it shouldn't be a difficult feature to implement. Were there any other concerns? (For example - if one background image was changed to be an interactive object, people would want others to do things too?)
    – user34587
    Mar 20, 2019 at 15:30
  • That's part of it, sure. (see edit for explanation)
    – Catija
    Mar 20, 2019 at 15:46
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    I kind of expected this if I'm honest, but thank you for following up on this Catija! Maybe one day. :)
    – Lilienthal Mod
    Mar 20, 2019 at 22:53
-2

Making a decorative design element link to a chatroom is a bad idea. It would not be consistent with any other Stack Exchange site. Also, I do not expect the background image of the footer to be a part of site's navigation.

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    I would agree if it was the only way to get to the Water Cooler. This would just be a fun, additional way to get there -- kind of an easter egg.
    – mcknz
    Mar 10, 2019 at 19:30

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