General > General Technical Chat
How to tag someone in a post?
Nominal Animal:
--- Quote from: abeyer on February 27, 2024, 02:28:52 am ---(I'd love to have seen your high school history teacher's face when reading your essays where every single historical figure's name is accompanied by a quote of theirs ;D)
--- End quote ---
(I'd love to have seen your high school history teacher's face when you told them you needed to send every one of the historical figures you mentioned a letter or postcard to tell them you referenced them in your essay.)
No, really. If you want to refer to someone, just use their username in the text. Why do you insist they need to be notified you used their username in a post?
If you want to know who has referred to you, just do a forum search on your username, and sort the results most recent first. I sometimes do that, but limiting the advanced search to posts made by a specific other member, to see if I've already discussed the issue with that member, to try and avoid repeating the same arguments. (As many dislike my long-ass posts, I'm sure they'd be even more aggravated if I kept repeating the same argument, so I try hard to not do that.)
I do not generally want to know if others refer to me in their posts. If they think I should participate in a thread, they can send me a friendly one-liner PM. I don't need to be notified. If I need to be notified of something, PMs exist for exactly that purpose.
Why should I spend my very meager cognitive faculties to try and ignore information that basically nobody needs, but a few members here think might be nice?
If I could disable the mentions, I would: I find them distracting, clamoring for my attention, when cognitively I don't want to know or react to people talking about me without telling me the context. I do not understand the purpose of mentions, unless it is exactly to affect emotions (involving connectedness and enticing/manipulating others to at least observe the discussion/thread just because they were mentioned), so in my view, they are purely a social "game", and provide no useful function that private messages or forum advanced search do not already do better.
PlainName:
--- Quote ---I do not understand the purpose of mentions
--- End quote ---
Feature creep.
Originally they were just a way to refer to someone in-thread. So, for instance, I am replying to you now but I might then also comment to another poster in this same comment. Why? Many reasons, but perhaps it's just an aside (@bloggs - we discussed this in t'other thread) or something. The point is that it's simply making someone else aware that this particular bit is aimed at them. And, often, a quote (if one could be found) would be way over the top and inappropriate.
Nothing wrong with that, and kind of clever. The comment is aimed *at* someone, and the @ is just a way to compress the necessary wibble that would otherwise reflect that.
Then someone implements the notifications and there you have mentions. I see it used on sites where there is no support for it at all - no notifications, not highlights, nothing - but it is still appropriate when used as shorthand.
Nominal Animal:
--- Quote from: PlainName on February 27, 2024, 10:58:15 am ---Originally they were just a way to refer to someone in-thread.
--- End quote ---
Sure; and I use the long-hand version of it ("I discussed this with bloggs in another thread"), and that's perfectly okay. It's perfectly okay to refer to any of my discussions using my name that way, too; it is the notification I was mentioned thus that aggravates me.
It is one more thing clamoring for my attention. I don't want that; it is useless cognitive load with no other purpose than "being social" somehow. I don't wanna.
--- Quote from: PlainName on February 27, 2024, 10:58:15 am ---The point is that it's simply making someone else aware that this particular bit is aimed at them. And, often, a quote (if one could be found) would be way over the top and inappropriate.
--- End quote ---
Yes; and my point is that making such a mention throw a notification to that referred to person, is like sending a postcard to anyone you've mentioned in a discussion saying you did so, with a link to the discussion. That is the useless, annoying, social gamification bit I dislike.
If a member could disable seeing the notifications, I'd be absolutely fine with this. I have no problem with the shorthand, either, as I do read '@' as 'at' anyway, and it is obvious from the context even if you hadn't noticed it before. I only object to getting the darn notifications when someone 'at's me; it's is unwanted and unwarranted cognitive load that does actually bug me a bit. Perhaps I'm an odd one out –– I even tend to scroll the post edit window so I don't see the animated emoticons when I don't want to use them, because they too are distracting; and before looking at interesting threads, I do always read my PM's ––, but I just fail to see the utility of a mention sending an unavoidable notification to the mentioned member.
Nominal Animal:
And I can immediately see how new users can start bugging members to answer their questions or to participate in the threads they start in the hopes they will help, simply by 'at'-ing them.
There; I warned ya. Don't tell me "nobody could have foreseen this would happen" in a year or so, when older members start leaving because they get fed up with the incessant "mentions" from newbies wanting quick answers.
tggzzz:
--- Quote from: Nominal Animal on February 27, 2024, 10:19:27 am ---
--- Quote from: abeyer on February 27, 2024, 02:28:52 am ---(I'd love to have seen your high school history teacher's face when reading your essays where every single historical figure's name is accompanied by a quote of theirs ;D)
--- End quote ---
(I'd love to have seen your high school history teacher's face when you told them you needed to send every one of the historical figures you mentioned a letter or postcard to tell them you referenced them in your essay.)
No, really. If you want to refer to someone, just use their username in the text. Why do you insist they need to be notified you used their username in a post?
If you want to know who has referred to you, just do a forum search on your username, and sort the results most recent first. I sometimes do that, but limiting the advanced search to posts made by a specific other member, to see if I've already discussed the issue with that member, to try and avoid repeating the same arguments. (As many dislike my long-ass posts, I'm sure they'd be even more aggravated if I kept repeating the same argument, so I try hard to not do that.)
I do not generally want to know if others refer to me in their posts. If they think I should participate in a thread, they can send me a friendly one-liner PM. I don't need to be notified. If I need to be notified of something, PMs exist for exactly that purpose.
Why should I spend my very meager cognitive faculties to try and ignore information that basically nobody needs, but a few members here think might be nice?
If I could disable the mentions, I would: I find them distracting, clamoring for my attention, when cognitively I don't want to know or react to people talking about me without telling me the context. I do not understand the purpose of mentions, unless it is exactly to affect emotions (involving connectedness and enticing/manipulating others to at least observe the discussion/thread just because they were mentioned), so in my view, they are purely a social "game", and provide no useful function that private messages or forum advanced search do not already do better.
--- End quote ---
Precisely, particularly the phrases I've emphasised.
I have no problem with the @tggzzz convention, provided it is obvious why I am being referred to - but frequently it isn't.
I hate the way mentions are used as "look at me, pay attention to me" crap that is at the centre of FarceBook and Twatter.
Navigation
[0] Message Index
[#] Next page
[*] Previous page
Go to full version