[RFC] Ability to @mention specific users in posts

[callumacrae]

Maybe using @ isn't a great idea since there's a big change for people mentioning actual twitter handles, maybe it should be something like reddit mentions, they mention users like this /u/username since user profiles have URLs like reddit.com/r/username, so using /u/ triggers the mention function. I'm guessing phpBB won't be using short urls but something like this looks elegant enough for me.

Twitter, facebook, GitHub, Slack, trello, Pivotal Tracker… and those are just the things I use every day! @ is pretty standard.

Hey look, it's even on Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/At_sign#C ... rary_usage

On some online forums without threaded discussions, @ is used to denote a reply; for instance: "@Jane" to respond to a comment Jane made earlier. Similarly, in some cases, @ is used for "attention" in email messages originally sent to someone else. For example, if an email was sent from Catherine to Steve, but in the body of the email, Catherine wants to make Keirsten aware of something, Catherine will start the line "@Keirsten" to indicate to Keirsten that the following sentence concerns her. This also helps with mobile email users who cannot see bold or color in email.

[mrgtb]

XenForo uses it as well as a feature, the @member

[nextgen]

XenForo uses it as well as a feature, the @member

Do not compare XenForo with phpBB, they are 2 completely different systems in structure.
I believe that with a bbcode you would be okay.

[callumacrae]

Do not compare XenForo with phpBB, they are 2 completely different systems in structure.

Not really?

[Nicofuma]

Xenforo didn't solve our issues: the frontend don't handled the username with spaces, this part is done by the backend. Also you don't have anyway to control if yes or no you want to mention someone (and you either cannot know before validating the form if someone will be mentionned). That's why I think that a bbcode is a good solution.

[hanakin]

unless we do something similar to github where it detects the name of a user in the topic and displays a typeahead drop down if you wish to use it. Could be useful for other reasons to have a DB field for participating users on the post as well.

[nextgen]

Do not compare XenForo with phpBB, they are 2 completely different systems in structure.

Not really?

No

[mrgtb]

XenForo uses it as well as a feature, the @member

Do not compare XenForo with phpBB, they are 2 completely different systems in structure.
I believe that with a bbcode you would be okay.

Who was comparing? I simply stated that XenForo has the @ feature, along with all the others that got listed from people. And how are they two completely different systems when both are forum software. Huh?

[JoshyPHP]

XenForo uses it as well as a feature, the @member

Do not compare XenForo with phpBB, they are 2 completely different systems in structure.
I believe that with a bbcode you would be okay.

That's what XenForo does. If you submit @user it gets replaced with @[url=/path/to/profile/user]user[/url].

Also you don't have anyway to control if yes or no you want to mention someone

What do you mean? If you type @User it means that you want to mention User. If you don't type that, it means you don't.

[Louis7777]

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.