[RFC] Ability to @mention specific users in posts

Discuss requests for comments/changes posted in the Issue Tracker for the development of phpBB. Current releases are 3.2/Rhea and 3.3/Proteus.
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imkingdavid
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Re: [RFC] Ability to @mention specific users in posts

Post by imkingdavid »

Oleg wrote:@ works for github most of the time, it's probably good enough.

From my experience @ does the right thing on github at least 95% of the time. There are however definitely some users you don't want to register as (@return, for example).

I estimate @ works a lot more than 95% of the time on twitter.
I think we should make it so you can escape the @ or else make it not act as a mention. Doing \@something should not act as a mention, and should just display as @something in the post (the \ should still remain on the edit screen). That way a user named return or var would not be mentioned every time someone is refering to a function return or class parameter documentation.
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EXreaction
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Re: [RFC] Ability to @mention specific users in posts

Post by EXreaction »

If this is accepted, I would expect a popup tool to help the users enter a username, which would properly format the mention in a bbcode. There is no need to escape it because an invalid name will not be accepted and usernames MUST be formatted in completely enclosed bbcode (e.g. @user name in source is [mention]user name[/mention]). Enclosed within bbcode is extremely important because we then can assure 100% accuracy in having an actual username instead of having to do like queries (and potentially multiple queries if similar usernames exist: @user @user jim).

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MichaelC
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Re: [RFC] Ability to @mention specific users in posts

Post by MichaelC »

EXreaction wrote:If this is accepted, I would expect a popup tool to help the users enter a username, which would properly format the mention in a bbcode. There is no need to escape it because an invalid name will not be accepted and usernames MUST be formatted in completely enclosed bbcode (e.g. @user name in source is [mention]user name[/mention]). Enclosed within bbcode is extremely important because we then can assure 100% accuracy in having an actual username instead of having to do like queries (and potentially multiple queries if similar usernames exist: @user @user jim).
+1

This should work with the notification centre.
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Re: [RFC] Ability to @mention specific users in posts

Post by Pony99CA »

ecwpa wrote:
Pony99CA wrote:
  • {user:xxx} links to the user with user name (and/or user ID?) xxx.
  • {forum:xxx} links to the forum with forum ID xxx (displaying the forum's name in the link).
  • {topic:xxx} links to the topic with topic ID xxx (displaying the topic's title in the link).
  • {post:xxx} links to the post with post ID xxx (displaying the post's title in the link).
  • {date:+/-something} adds the current date plus or minus the "something".
  • {time:+/-something} adds the current time plus or minus the "something".
That looks interesting. But I was wondering if that's how it's going to be saved in the database? If not why using that format? In the case of @mentions it would be more practical to replace it with a tradicional url bbcode, no?
No, they would absolutely not be stored in the database that way; they're just shorthand, so they'd be replaced by other text. (Exception: In a BBCode definition, they would be stored like that in the HTML replacement part, but the instantiation of the BBCode would replace the shorthand.)

For example, in this post, if I typed:

Code: Select all

{user:ecwpa}
the database would contain:

Code: Select all

[url=https://area51.phpbb.com/phpBB/memberlist.php?mode=viewprofile&u=21127]ecwpa[/url]
and the text would render like:

ecwpa.

As for why you wouldn't use BBCode syntax, one reason is the Exception noted above -- these are allowed as BBCode parameters -- and the other is that they may have other actions (mentioning a user triggers a notification, mentioning a topic could trigger a notification to subscribers, etc.) which BBCodes don't do.

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callumacrae
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Re: [RFC] Ability to @mention specific users in posts

Post by callumacrae »

There are some truly ugly ideas in this thread :-(

Can we stop thinking like developers and start thinking about UX for a moment, please?
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EXreaction
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Re: [RFC] Ability to @mention specific users in posts

Post by EXreaction »

What part of the UX?

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DavidIQ
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Re: [RFC] Ability to @mention specific users in posts

Post by DavidIQ »

A BBCode might be the best way to go to ensure accuracy but also typing @ should provide some sort of list to select from. Since we're already going to have WYSIWYG integration this would still look as if one has typed it in and not show the BBCode.

On the other hand I do like the simplicity of the @ mentioning without any of these extra hoops we're trying to jump through. Oleg already said that it works most of the time in other systems and that would be acceptable if that was the case here (i.e. we don't need 100% accuracy).
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Re: [RFC] Ability to @mention specific users in posts

Post by ecwpa »

Pony99CA wrote:

Code: Select all

{user:ecwpa}
the database would contain:

Code: Select all

[url=https://area51.phpbb.com/phpBB/memberlist.php?mode=viewprofile&u=21127]ecwpa[/url]
and the text would render like:

ecwpa.
I see, although as callumacrae said one of the goals is making it intuitive. You wouldn't know how to trigger it unless you read a bbcode guide but using @mention is way more intuitive.

Facebook does it this way: you type "@" and then a letter "@e" or "@ec" it will show a list of usernames starting with "ec", then it puts a like to that user for you on your post. The only difference is phpBB doesn't have a rich text editor for that.
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MichaelC
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Re: [RFC] Ability to @mention specific users in posts

Post by MichaelC »

DavidIQ wrote:On the other hand I do like the simplicity of the @ mentioning without any of these extra hoops we're trying to jump through. Oleg already said that it works most of the time in other systems and that would be acceptable if that was the case here (i.e. we don't need 100% accuracy).
+1
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Re: [RFC] Ability to @mention specific users in posts

Post by Atramez_Zeton »

to be honest I'm still concerned about abusing this feature to make a post just for mention, I would suggest that mention should be a tag option next to the post not as a text you include inside the post.

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