[RFC] Ability to @mention specific users in posts

[DavidIQ]

The possibility to mention someone in a topic is of vital importance to the Notification system.....
It should be included by default as not everybody even knows there is an extension for this.
The extension is only developed and maintained by one phpbb enthusiast and the development seems to go very slow.
I believe the phpbb dev team should at least join in to maintain the extension.... When they are sure that they got the best way to do it, maybe they can merge it in the core.....

The extension isn't even completely stable which should tell you something. You can look forward to possibly having this included in 3.2 but not before.

[Dragosvr92]

The extension isn't even completely stable which should tell you something. You can look forward to possibly having this included in 3.2 but not before.

Exactly why i wrote the above, suggesting that the phpbb dev team should pop in to work on it as its too much work for only one developer imo.

And...

"I believe the phpbb dev team should at least join in to maintain the extension.... When they are sure that they got the best way to do it, maybe they can merge it in the core....."

[DavidIQ]

Merging an extension into the core isn't that simple. For the amount of work needed to put it in and the code refactoring that will likely be needed it would end up being completely redone. And if there is an insistence by the community on having the extension then it would simply become an official extension, meaning that adding it to the core would not be needed at all. Judging from the amount of responses here I think, in fact, that the latter is what will end up happening.

[Pony99CA]

Merging an extension into the core isn't that simple. For the amount of work needed to put it in and the code refactoring that will likely be needed it would end up being completely redone. And if there is an insistence by the community on having the extension then it would simply become an official extension, meaning that adding it to the core would not be needed at all. Judging from the amount of responses here I think, in fact, that the latter is what will end up happening.

That would be my suggestion as well. Official extensions are almost as good as putting code in the core. (If you can come up with a way to package all official extensions into an installable unit, that would be even better.)

While I think that notifications for mentioning users are useful, I don't think that it's of "vital importance" to the notification system as was claimed. Were it truly vital, the notification system wouldn't even be in 3.1, and yet it is.

Steve

[Louis7777]

While I think that notifications for mentioning users are useful, I don't think that it's of "vital importance" to the notification system as was claimed. Were it truly vital, the notification system wouldn't even be in 3.1, and yet it is.

The second sentence... just, what?

Are you saying that if @mention notifications - which are notifications - were truly vital, then we wouldn't have the notification system in 3.1 because we would have @mentions which are notifications and which would require a notification system although not the one that we currently have in 3.1? And despite that @mentions is only about active notifications (a user calling for a user) and that we'd miss a ton of passive (?) notifications such as a user simply replying to a topic?

Please show me the logic that I can't find behind the sentence.

I also think that @mention notifications would be very useful and a convenience, but yes, not of vital importance.

[DavidIQ]

I believe the inference can be made from that sentence that he means if mentions were so vital to the notifications system the notification system would not have made it into 3.1 at all since inclusion of both would be directly dependent on each other having been completed.

[Louis7777]

Thanks David, it does make sense now.

Well, a way to actively notify a user - and thus make a notification appear at his notification center - is quite important.

Currently the only way to do that is by quoting the user. But even if the development team didn't have the time to implement notifications from quotes, the notification system would still have made it in 3.1. And so one could say that notifications from quotes are not vital either, the way that Pony99CA means it.

Thinking of it that way, even if there was only one kind of notification (e.g. replies to a post) we could still have the notification system. It would be vital for demontrating it (rather than for its existence) to have at least one kind of notification.

So it depends on the context of the word 'vital'. If "of vital importance to the notification system" = "can't exist without it", then Pony's statement makes sense. But I doubt that Dragosvr92 meant it that way. Why would he when he can already see that the system exists and works without @mentions?

What he probably meant is that it is of vital importance to the notification system to have @mentions in order to offer a good user experience through active notifications (or w/e you'd like to call them). Because quoting alone does not offer that.

[Pony99CA]

My point, as David picked up on, was that calling any notification type that doesn't exist "vital" is probably hyperbole. Think of my sentence as a self-contained reductio ad absurdum proof.

The most important notifications -- the ones that triggered E-mail in phpBB 3.0 -- were the only ones that I would have considered "vital". Any others are just gravy (good gravy, but gravy nonetheless).

Steve

[diego898]

So just to clarify, this will *not* be a part of core, but *might* be an extension?

[DavidIQ]

So just to clarify, this will *not* be a part of core, but *might* be an extension?

It won't be in 3.2 for sure and there already is an extension, which someone already posted a link to it.