General > General Technical Chat

How to tag someone in a post?

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Nominal Animal:

--- Quote from: PlainName on February 27, 2024, 06:03:38 pm ---'SOk, I'm not going to keep on at this,  but a classic 'do as I say, not as I do' was too hard to pass up  8)
--- End quote ---
Well, we're not perfect, and occasionally pointing it out and accepting it as a fact is probably healthy.  When "me fail", I do feel the embarrassment pretty intensely, but I do also enjoy the laugh at my own expense, how silly and stupid I can be.  I do hope others will laugh at me too when I make such errors.
Keeps me grounded, I think, and it is always good to smile a bit.  I assume the same applies to most others, tggzzz and yourself included.

I for one am assuming good faith on part of everyone participating in this thread.  I see that we're pretty divided, with one set (including myself) seeing only/mostly the negatives, one set describing what they like but not commenting on the negatives, and one set basically observing the discussion.  Am I a Negative-Nelly for demanding attention towards the risks/downsides rather than the positives mentioned?  I don't know, but I do seem to lean that way.  Some do like the feature, it seems, and while it baffles me as to why and how, I do accept it as a cold hard fact and am not trying to change anyones opinion.

Any decisions will be made by Dave et al., of course, and I'm not sure this discussion will sway their choice any.


--- Quote from: ebastler on February 27, 2024, 06:55:43 pm ---But I will drop out of the discussion here. No bad feelings, nothing personal. But seeing how intense you and tggzzz get about the "mention" concept, I don't need the agitation and aggravation from trying to "defend" it. And, as mentioned before, my feelings in favor of it are not anywhere as strong as your feelings against it.
--- End quote ---
Hm.  Feelings?  Agitation?  I am very poor at conveying those in written English, so I'm not sure that 1) the feelings I've unintentionally conveyed here in my posts are real, or that 2) even if real and correctly interpreted, they actually matter at all.  (The stuff that I intentionally convey is usually humour, often self-deprecating; when I convey true anger/disappointment/frustration/negative feelings, I typically use swear words.)

As I see the situation now, there are users who like the feature, some users who find it annoying, and a couple of possible scenarios how the feature could be misused annoying members and possibly having them stop participating.  (I'm not referring to myself!  Like I said, I personally already have workarounds lined up.)

I'd love to see an argument balancing those somehow, or at least acknowledging both sides; and morover, comparing them to real world examples.  The ones I can come up with are all negative, but that may be because my attention focus is naturally oriented that way; a built-in bias.  And that is exactly why I so much like to and appreciate discussing things with people who disagree with me, if they are willing to explain their reasons/reasoning and not just state their opinions 'take it or leave it' -fashion.

ebastler:

--- Quote from: Nominal Animal on February 27, 2024, 07:23:24 pm ---I'd love to see an argument balancing those somehow, or at least acknowledging both sides; and morover, comparing them to real world examples.  The ones I can come up with are all negative, but that may be because my attention focus is naturally oriented that way; a built-in bias.  And that is exactly why I so much like to and appreciate discussing things with people who disagree with me, if they are willing to explain their reasons/reasoning and not just state their opinions 'take it or leave it' -fashion.

--- End quote ---

Look, I originally brought up this topic in the "News/Suggestions/Help" section out of curiosity. I had noticed a "mention" indicator in my profile for the first time, looked up the relevant post, and wondered how that "@name" mention was created. (It does not work from my account.) I was not aware of this older thread.

I have explained a use case there where I would find mentions helpful. I have also explained that I find the notification very unobtrusive and have shown in screenshots what it looks like. I really don't have more to say and argue about this.

The "mention" mechanism useful in my view, but it is obviously not a necessity. If (some) others find it intolerable, then let's disable it, since the side effects outweigh the benefits.

tggzzz:

--- Quote from: ebastler on February 27, 2024, 06:55:43 pm ---
--- Quote from: Nominal Animal on February 27, 2024, 06:35:36 pm ---I in no way want to cause you to leave the discussion.  I can understand that my style is confrontational and not "professional"/"nice" or even acceptable at times, but underneath all that really is a honest pursuit of understanding.

--- End quote ---

But I will drop out of the discussion here. No bad feelings, nothing personal. But seeing how intense you and tggzzz get about the "mention" concept, I don't need the agitation and aggravation from trying to "defend" it. And, as mentioned before, my feelings in favor of it are not anywhere as strong as your feelings against it.

--- End quote ---

I'm interested in understanding three things about any new mechanism/technology. I listen to the proponents' arguments to determine

* what benefits does it give
* what is the cost (money, learning curve, speed, space,...)
* what are the alternative ways of achieving the benefits
For mentions, the benefits appear minor at best - no more than syntactic sugar or chrome plating. Some of the costs are minor (e.g. how notifications are displayed), but some are potentially major, especially subtle changes in the atmosphere of this forum towards that of other unpleasant timewasting sites. And there are existing ways of getting the benefits. So overall from my perspective the negatives outweigh the positives.

That technique has served me very well in my career, enabling me to avoid investing in shiny new transient toys, but still jumping on seriously good long-term opportunities.

Nominal Animal:

--- Quote from: ebastler on February 27, 2024, 07:40:09 pm ---Look, I originally brought up this topic in the "News/Suggestions/Help" section out of curiosity. I had noticed a "mention" indicator in my profile for the first time, looked up the relevant post, and wondered how that "@name" mention was created. (It does not work from my account.) I was not aware of this older thread.
--- End quote ---
Ah, okay!  I fully understand your position, then.


--- Quote from: ebastler on February 27, 2024, 07:40:09 pm ---I have explained a use case there where I would find mentions helpful. I have also explained that I find the notification very unobtrusive and have shown in screenshots what it looks like. I really don't have more to say and argue about this.
--- End quote ---
That's okay too!  Although, you could have mentioned you haven't considered any possible downsides, because silence is the absolute hardest response to understand and evaluate correctly.

(As an aside, veering into general discussion mechanisms: participants simply remaining silent about possible errors or omissions is a very negative, destructive pattern.  Even though it stings me a lot, I try to make sure I don't do that.  See this for an example a bit over a year ago.  The value of this may be low-ish for participants, but very high for anyone reading the thread as an non-participant: it will help them evaluate more accurately what is technically correct and what is not, so the data they form their opinion on is more reliable/factual/useful.  In technical discussions and in scientific publications, this kind of 'brutal honesty' is a necessity for the results to be valid, no matter how awkward/uncomfortable socially.  Using a pseudonym in such discussions helps a lot, because the same is obviously not good in a workplace environment: admitting any mistakes ever can be a career suicide in some fields, especially if dealing with customers.  This is my current understanding based on running a company, then switching to scientific research, and participating in dozens of different types of projects.)


--- Quote from: ebastler on February 27, 2024, 07:40:09 pm ---The "mention" mechanism useful in my view, but it is obviously not a necessity. If (some) others find it intolerable, then let's disable it, since the side effects outweigh the benefits.
--- End quote ---
My suggestion would be to disable it until each member can disable the notification of mentions, or, if possible, just disable the notification only.

That is, the @ -syntax turning into a link to the target users profile in a post, with the current username completion mechanism in the post editor, is perfectly fine.  Having them show up in the separate Profile > Mentions is okay, too.  That is similar to how Thanks currently work.
The contention is about whether a new mention should cause the referred to member always get a notification of it, in the form of having the number of new mentions as Profile [N] at the top of the page.

If mention notification (next to the Profile button) is made optional –– compare to PM controls! ––, have the moderators post in Supporters Lounge about the feature, and that if misused, report such posts (perhaps with keywords "mention trolling").  Describe the three most likely negative patterns, i.e. mentioning someone just to say their response was bad/insufficient/wrong/didn't answer the question; mentioning someone just in the hope that they might answer a beginner question (especially for homework-type questions!); and mentioning someone (to generate the notification) but then modify the post to remove the mention, in the hopes that it causes the mentioned member to get the notification but not see it in the target message and "worry" about what it was about.

(I am not sure if the negative patterns should be mentioned in the posting guidance for new posters.  If at all, then only in passing, as in "Misusing this for annoying members or trying to rope them into answering your question is considered trolling, and can get your account banned."  No need to tell trolls the tools they can use for trolling.) (Yes, I am aware that this thread is in the General Technical Chat forum, but I expect it to get buried in the avalanche quite soon, so will only be discovered via forum and web searches.)

I just wish I could express these things clearer and more concisely, and in the first post, instead of incrementally refining via multiple posts.  Very few people will actually read my wall-of-text posts, and I'm not sure Dave and the moderators even have the time to, even if they were interested in the content.

PlainName:

--- Quote ---My suggestion would be to disable it until each member can disable the notification of mentions, or, if possible, just disable the notification only.
--- End quote ---

Why does it need disabling? No-one uses it so disabling would have zero effect at the potential cost of breaking something.

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