[RFC] Ability to @mention specific users in posts

[EXreaction]

I do not see this feature being abused on Github or even Facebook, do you?

[ecwpa]

still a legitimate concern, imagine spam bots abusing it, direct spam to your email.

[EXreaction]

In that case, this wouldn't behave any differently than say, a Private Message.

[callumacrae]

I do not see this feature being abused on Github or even Facebook, do you?

Find out your child's name! Type @ [ (without the space), the year of your date of birth, and then ]!

I don't think forum users are as stupid as Facebook users, though

[DavidIQ]

I'm not sure that's really a concern we should be worried about. As long as there aren't multiple notifications being generated for a single post then that's probably fine. We might want to limit the amount of mentions, perhaps on a switch (*ghasp*), so that a bot can't go and retrieve the entire list of users and mention everyone.

One thing to consider however is if a user edits their post and then adds a mention. I suppose post revisions would then come into play and the edited version compared to the previous version to figure out if a notification should be fired off.

[MichaelC]

still a legitimate concern, imagine spam bots abusing it, direct spam to your email.

Don't forget, we have the notification centre so it wouldn't necessarily be an email.

Also, it should probably have a permission to be able to do it, as is done with certian other BBCodes. This means it could be blocked for newly registered users (or even for registered users if you wanted it to be a staff only feature).

[Pony99CA]

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.

In a Rich Text editor, nothing would prevent you from typing @, getting the list, selecting the user's name and then inserting {user:username} into the post. It's similar to clicking the B (Bold) button and having the B BBCode tag placed in the text.

In fact, you could also have a "tag username" button in the BBCode button area which basically did the same thing as typing @ (for those who prefer the non-WYSIWYG mode).

There are some truly ugly ideas in this thread

Can we stop thinking like developers and start thinking about UX for a moment, please?

Umm, I generally pride myself on considering UX, having almost always considered myself an advocate for the user and usability. I've designed user interfaces and offered numerous improvements on many, so I'm not new at this.

And considering your use of terms like UX (User eXperience) without defining them, I'm not totally convinced that you're not thinking like a developer here (readability is part of usability).

Steve

[Atramez_Zeton]

I do not see this feature being abused on Github or even Facebook, do you?

Facebook and Github are not forums systems, they are just personal spots for you to work on and social type networks, so you can do whatever you want on your own space but on forums everyone share the topics and statics..etc its an overall contribution.

I'm not sure that's really a concern we should be worried about. As long as there aren't multiple notifications being generated for a single post then that's probably fine. We might want to limit the amount of mentions, perhaps on a switch (*ghasp*), so that a bot can't go and retrieve the entire list of users and mention everyone.

My concern is like the chit-chat space you placed in the forums that doesn't increase people's posts count, Why you didnt allow it? the reason is to make this forums a "quality" forum, thats my concern the quality of what people should post, would I add a feature if Its going to be suppressed? I dont want someone to put a post at the top of the forum, everyone who subscribed on that post get an email notification about a new post just for a mention tag.

I don't think forum users are as stupid as Facebook users, though

phpbb forums are used in nearly all word languages, think of how many people are using that software and the % of how many can be stupid
personally there is a difference between being stupid on how to use the forums tools or being stupid on how to present a good post, and im not sure which one you mean, in both cases I dont let it happen.

again I do encourage mention should be included built-in the "quote" BBCode at least it means something that the person you got their quote would know it.

[DavidIQ]

My concern is like the chit-chat space you placed in the forums that doesn't increase people's posts count, Why you didnt allow it? the reason is to make this forums a "quality" forum, thats my concern the quality of what people should post, would I add a feature if Its going to be suppressed? I dont want someone to put a post at the top of the forum, everyone who subscribed on that post get an email notification about a new post just for a mention tag.

How exactly does being able to mention someone in your post degrade the quality of posting?

[Atramez_Zeton]

My concern is like the chit-chat space you placed in the forums that doesn't increase people's posts count, Why you didnt allow it? the reason is to make this forums a "quality" forum, thats my concern the quality of what people should post, would I add a feature if Its going to be suppressed? I dont want someone to put a post at the top of the forum, everyone who subscribed on that post get an email notification about a new post just for a mention tag.

How exactly does being able to mention someone in your post degrade the quality of posting?

How can you describe a post as good one?
a close example when you contribute a mod in the forums then you get like 10 pages of posts saying "thanks" then someone ask about something, the info is lost in the sea of "thanks", and a user who is going to open that topic to waste time for reading each post that only has "thanks" to get one extra info is a user who not going to waste his/her time again for other topic and read the posts, which means you have low quality posts, and lost a good contribution, i feel the same way for "mention" as you just put mentions then you waste users time and website resources, since I believe that most users are going to use it for "tagging" and making a post just for tagging is evil.