[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.
Post Reply
Holger
Registered User
Posts: 5
Joined: Tue Mar 12, 2002 3:54 pm
Location: Hannover
Contact:

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

Post by Holger »

The @username should not link to a userprofile. It should trigger a notification (no PM) of "username" that he/she was mentioned in a post. And the notification should be shown in the built-in notification area.
In Tapatalk this behaviour is used to notify users that they are mentioned, I dont know how they handle spaces in usernames.
Louis7777 wrote:Only typing @ and then choosing the username will do it.
How will this work on boards with 50K users?
Are you a phpBB Expert?
Are you looking for a phpBB Expert?
http://www.phpbbexperts.com

User avatar
Louis7777
Registered User
Posts: 394
Joined: Fri Apr 04, 2014 12:32 am

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

Post by Louis7777 »

Holger wrote:The @username should not link to a userprofile.
Facebook does it that way. What's wrong with that?
Holger wrote:
Louis7777 wrote:Only typing @ and then choosing the username will do it.
How will this work on boards with 50K users?
The same way it works on this board at https://area51.phpbb.com/phpBB/memberli ... searchuser

Senky
Extension Customisations
Extension Customisations
Posts: 315
Joined: Thu Jul 16, 2009 4:41 pm

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

Post by Senky »

Holger wrote:The @username should not link to a userprofile...
Why? It is totally independent feature of notification system. I would be happy to see it linked, just like Github works...
Holger wrote:How will this work on boards with 50K users?
Usually, it works the way, that it uses algorithm to pick the most probable users (users you discuss the most, etc.), but I would say, that it would be enough to display only first 10 names in alphabetical order.

Holger
Registered User
Posts: 5
Joined: Tue Mar 12, 2002 3:54 pm
Location: Hannover
Contact:

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

Post by Holger »

Louis7777 wrote:
Holger wrote:
Louis7777 wrote:Only typing @ and then choosing the username will do it.
How will this work on boards with 50K users?
The same way it works on this board at https://area51.phpbb.com/phpBB/memberli ... searchuser
Yes, I see, that is nice!


Sorry, I maybe thought wrong there, of course it can be a link to the userprofile (in addition).
But I think it is more use to it triggering a notification.
Are you a phpBB Expert?
Are you looking for a phpBB Expert?
http://www.phpbbexperts.com

User avatar
DavidIQ
Customisations Team Leader
Customisations Team Leader
Posts: 1904
Joined: Thu Mar 02, 2006 4:29 pm
Location: Earth
Contact:

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

Post by DavidIQ »

Holger wrote:Sorry, I maybe thought wrong there, of course it can be a link to the userprofile (in addition).
But I think it is more use to it triggering a notification.
Well that would be the exact use of this, not an email or something else, and was always the assumption of what mentioning someone would do (create a notification).
Image

mrgtb
Registered User
Posts: 221
Joined: Wed Nov 28, 2007 10:09 pm

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

Post by mrgtb »

I don't think having @user in posts, if not causing an alert is worth adding. The whole point of using @user is make another person aware they got mentioned in a post. Which could be something like: "@joe can create that mod for you, talk to him".

Joe, he would get an alert and contact other person, or whatever? But what use is @user if they never know they got mentioned in a post. I'm curious also to know... what will happen if a user misspells another users name (that would have created an alert) to a member that doesn't exist on forum.

User avatar
Louis7777
Registered User
Posts: 394
Joined: Fri Apr 04, 2014 12:32 am

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

Post by Louis7777 »

mrgtb wrote:I'm curious also to know... what will happen if a user misspells another users name (that would have created an alert) to a member that doesn't exist on forum.
That won't be possible if the only way to create an @mention is to select a username from a list of suggestions.

mrgtb
Registered User
Posts: 221
Joined: Wed Nov 28, 2007 10:09 pm

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

Post by mrgtb »

Yeah, was wondering if that was the way it was going to be done.

User avatar
hanakin
Front-End Dev Team Lead
Front-End Dev Team Lead
Posts: 968
Joined: Sat Dec 25, 2010 9:02 pm
Contact:

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

Post by hanakin »

Louis7777 wrote:
Nicofuma wrote:more simply, the spaces are a problem: when does we stop to search for the username? Does we search for @Hi@Hi Oh@Hi Oh Great@Hi Oh Great Conflict or @Hi Oh Great Conflict with spaces?
And i don't think we can find a solution because all characters are allowed in the usernames, so we can't use something like that @'Hi Oh Great Conflict' with space
I can't remember what all the problems with the @ implementation are, but I'm quoting yours since it was the first that I located as I was reviewing this topic. (:

Currently we have a live member search. I believe that it can already fetch us any username no matter how many the spaces are, right?

So now let's consider a live member search like Facebook's, whenever someone types the @ character.
  1. You type @ and then a popup should come up with username results.
  2. You choose one: "Hi Oh Great"
  3. Now your post draft has Hi Oh Great which becomes a link to the corresponding member's profile.
  4. A record of this 'mention' is kept, so when you decide to submit your post a notification will be sent to the appropriate user.
  5. If you decide to edit the post, it should look like this: @username . Like MichaelC already said. Edits won't notify the users. Normally typing the aforementioned line won't notify them either, because no 'mention' will be recorded. So normally typing the BBCode won't trigger any notifications. Only typing @ and then choosing the username will do it.
  6. Finally, you can delete words from the username - just like on Facebook - without affecting the 'mention'. So you may only post Hi and "Hi Oh Great" will still receive his notification. Only when you remove all the words, will the recorded 'mention' be deleted.
Facebook, however, only fetches usernames from our lists of friends and the participants in the topic (and maybe friends of friends and pages, idk). So we should decide whether it would be prudent to do something similar rather than searching in the entire userbase.
nothing after this post until now is relevant to the proposal. I say this sounds completely logical and accurate.

Not sure if we need to search the entire userbase, maybe just those who are participating in the topic, friends, staff? Or we could expand it to the forum its in but that might be overkill? I would say this would need to be tested on a userbase the size of phpbb.com or larger to determine the exact method but other than that sounds like a plan!

test to see if you get notifications currently for quoting yourself?
hanakin wrote:
Donations welcome via Paypal Image

User avatar
JoshyPHP
Registered User
Posts: 381
Joined: Fri Jul 08, 2011 9:43 pm

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

Post by JoshyPHP »

hanakin wrote:Not sure if we need to search the entire userbase, maybe just those who are participating in the topic, friends, staff?
The names of the current user's friends (does anybody use that?) and the users who participated in current topic should/could be on top of the list, but mentions can also be used to drag more people into the discussion, e.g. "This sounds cool but let's hear what @user thinks about it". That's why you need to be able to mention anybody.
hanakin wrote:Or we could expand it to the forum its in but that might be overkill?
Yes, the SQL query would be terrible.
hanakin wrote:I would say this would need to be tested on a userbase the size of phpbb.com or larger to determine the exact method but other than that sounds like a plan!
If you're talking about the database, it doesn't really matter. I assume that the username column is indexed, the query will be about as fast whether there are 100 users or 100K. And either way you only want to return the first 10 or so.

Post Reply