@PlainName I agree. Repeat I disagree.
That's a crude extreme example of how merely mentioning someone is poor style and untasteful. While both of those statements is true, the lost context is critical.
It could, heaven forbid, be used as a "weapon": add such a tag to many posts in a tiny font so the recipient gets inundated but other people don't notice, or be malicious by using the wrong member id
It seems unlikely one could generate enough conspiracy to create a DDoS this way, and a lone actor can simply be reported to admin and banned. It's... not difficult, there are systems in place for this already.
Tim
I'm not really sure what bigjoncoop means by tag. If it's just create a link to their profile, then that's easy, as I've just demonstrated. I right clicked on their name, copied the link and pasted into this post in url tags.
Please do not "tag" or "mention" someone.
Please do quote their points.
And if the person you want to mention has not been involved in the thread, quite possibly is not aware that it even exists, but is known to be expert on the matters being discussed?
Include a link to one or more of the experts posts?
PM the expert?
But maybe the expert has seen the thread and doesn't want to be involved. There are some Awful/Aweful Examples of threads started by certain incontinent posters
I'm not a fan of arguments along the lines of "We shouldn't have fast cars / guns / pseudoephedrine / modems / books because bad people exist who might use them in a bad way".
There are mechanisms to deal with bad people directly, without taking away useful things from normal people.
I'll avoid the detour into that rathole territory.
I will note that mechanisms are only useful if reliably enforced. That is far from guaranteed. Take, for example, the "thanks" mechanism on this website; there's at least one poster that thanks every response in the myriad of twattish threads he has started. (N.B. some people directly tell him he is an idiot, and he thanks them!)
I'm not really sure what bigjoncoop means by tag. If it's just create a link to their profile, then that's easy, as I've just demonstrated. I right clicked on their name, copied the link and pasted into this post in url tags.
OTOH the main thing I am here for is the high quality content and there is so much crap around the internet that the forum software is the least of issues.
Various "features" are used on other sites to attract attention. People that succumb to such misadventures are more likely to like the crap there.
Hence, although it doesn't logically follow, I have the (partially satisfied) hope that if we keep such misfeatures away then the crap will stay away.
Various "features" are used on other sites to attract attention. People that succumb to such misadventures are more likely to like the crap there.
Hence, although it doesn't logically follow, I have the (partially satisfied) hope that if we keep such misfeatures away then the crap will stay away.I guess it is a matter of opinion and I do not think I agree. At least for me implementing those things would make the forum easier to use and more enjoyable and I do not think they would attract more crappy posters than we already enjoy. I think the way to keep crappy posts and posters away is with good community habits and good moderation but that is just my opinion.
I don't see those features would allow me to do anything more or more easily.
Quotes? The "new replies to your posts" page does what I need: direct me to a thread I have previously found interesting.
Mentions? Quotes are better, since they contain the context and content.
I've only very recently added a few people to my ignore list. I don't like doing that. (And it doesn't work properly anyway).
Quotes? The "new replies to your posts" page does what I need: direct me to a thread I have previously found interesting.Kind of, but not really. It doesn't differentiate at all between people directly replying/continuing a thread of conversation I was involved in vs. a thread that I posted in once years ago that just refuses to die and has gone off topic or strayed into stuff I don't much care about anymore.
Mentions? Quotes are better, since they contain the context and content.You keep repeating that without actually responding to the points made that they are for different things, and just dwelling on the fact that it can be misused where quotes would have been more appropriate.
I've only very recently added a few people to my ignore list. I don't like doing that. (And it doesn't work properly anyway).Seems like a perfect example of why the minimal features/minimal functionality isn't necessarily a total good... any effect it has on reducing low quality posters is balanced by the fact that the tools for users and mods to deal with them also suffer.
I don't really understand that sentence.
Inasfar as I so understand it, I don't want egoboos (i.e. mentions), but I am happy to discuss specific points I have made. Hence quotes are fine but mentions are not.
That smacks of "Something must be done. This is something. Therefore this must be done".
I wonder if it's possible to implement this, with the facility for users to opt out, so they can prevent others tagging them?
(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 )
I do not understand the purpose of mentions
Originally they were just a way to refer to someone in-thread.
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.
(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 )(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.
(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 )(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?
Just trying to understand. If I want to say in a post something about you wrote, you prefer me to write "tggzzz said ..." rather than "@tggzzz said..." ? You mentioned "quote" should be used but independent of its use, there is a need for a "mention"=reference to someone in a text.None of that, as I have previously and explicitly stated.
If you want to say something about one of my posts, quote that post. Don't make it about me. Do make it about what I said.
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?
English is not my first language, and I have not stayed in an English speaking country more than a month, so probably I misunderstand the point here.
Aesthetically, I do prefer to mark a username in a text (and at symbol works for me), because the username is not part of the language (I am not saying this for English, as it is not my native language, but I do think the same for my native language as well) and also it has a special function (like a URL), it is like using single or double quotes or italics (depending on the language) when using a foreign word in a text, or using url markup here or in other platforms.
We're here for the underlying logic, reasoning and experience; and not to score personalities or see whose opinion is most popular.
...
I do believe the possible downsides –– misuse by newbies, and misuse by trolls who use the mention mechanism to ensure the targets of their snide remarks will see them, hopefully before the moderators have time to react and remove the post –– are vastly greater than any upsides.
I wonder if it's possible to implement this, with the facility for users to opt out, so they can prevent others tagging them?