If this feature (i.e. notifying user in Q&A body content by "@Username") is NOT implemented, then (IMHO) it should not be allowed at all to write @Username because:

• If the user pointed to by @Username changes their username or deletes their account, then the @Username will not be relevant (because it is not dynamically linked to the real username).
• In the event of account deletion, this could lead to breaches of confidentiality.

Proposal

When clicking the blue "Save post to Q&A" button, if a "@Username" is detected in the text body of the Q&A post, then the post is not allowed to be published and a warning is displayed (like when an image with no alt text is given) stating that notifying a user by @Username is not allowed in Q&A posts (only in comments).

Publication of the post could still be allowed if the @Username is not a valid username existing in the user database. But in this case, a warning message could still be displayed explaining that it is not recommended to use @Username in the body of questions and answers (see the Bonus section below).

Bonus

This solution also provides a way to create a kind of "general recommendation" about how to quote the author of a comment or Q&A, as some explanations can be added to the warning message, for e.g.:

Please use links to quote a comment or post without explicitly writing the name of the author. See this post [link to post] for more details.

Possible issues

A possible issue is the fact that sometimes one will want to use the @Username syntax intentionally, for example. to explain something on Meta. Then it might be nice to be able to "escape" the automatic @Username detection. For e.g. by inserting a character before like \@ or something.

But, if the @Username doesn't point to an existing username, then we can still use @Username so it's kind of an escape (if a non-existing username is find).

posted over 1 year ago

CC BY-SA 4.0

1y ago

zetyty‭

6 3 21 16

Let's please not!

I know different people have different views on this, but if the focus is on the question and on getting quality answers, then why would it matter who answers, to the extent that you actually need to notify a particular user about your question?

If someone is interested in a particular subject area, that person is likely to keep an eye out for questions about that anyway. Therefore, it seems likely that they would see the question whether or not there is some kind of explicit notification mechanism implemented.

If someone says in a comment "you really should break that question into its own post so it can get the attention it deserves", then a follow-up comment with a link might be reasonable; but that's already possible, and doesn't require naming the user in question in the question. Heck, the user might not even want their name publicly and perpetually associated with the question.

This kind of feature might work reasonably within a closed team, where you might otherwise e-mail or IM a particular person with your question. However, I don't think it's particularly relevant to the use case of public Q&A.

At an absolute minimum, if this gets implemented, it needs to be optional and selectable by each user whether they want to be able to be alerted in this manner or not, and that option needs to default to off. It probably also needs to be a per-site setting whether to allow use of such a feature at all.

It also needs to tackle the issue of multiple users having the same display name. How to differentiate between a dozen users who all have the display name "John Doe"?

Personally, I would likely, and certainly before long, treat such notifications as spam.

posted over 4 years ago

CC BY-SA 4.0

4y ago

Canina‭

70 78 760 152

Not at the moment, and it's not a planned feature. To be able to do this, we'd need to find a way to design the feature to avoid abuse - if you could notify Jon Skeet on every C# question you ever had, that'd be great, but I'm pretty sure he'd get tired of it.

There may be use cases for this kind of "notify X about your post", like SO for Teams has, but it would need some design consideration first.

posted over 4 years ago

CC BY-SA 4.0

ArtOfCode‭ staff

9 151 812 244

I totally agree that this is a feature i'd prefer to be left out. It is to hard to implement in a way that doesn't get abused.

The need for @mentions is rendered essentially moot through the proper implementation of notifications that can be customised by the end user.

IE - I want notifications on any posts or answers i've interacted with including comments.

if i'm a high volume poster modifying that to notifications on posts but not answers or comments.

The only place the @mentions really work is the first use case which, with our notifications doesn't offer us anything new.

posted over 4 years ago

CC BY-SA 4.0

mattbrent‭ staff

0 6 21 2

This is not only a bad idea for the reasons already outlined in existing answers, but:

Codidact is first and foremost a Q/A network, not a discussion forum, not a helpdesk, not a chat service, and not a social media. Being able to mention users in posts would directly contradict the goals of this network. For a curated repository of quality answers to quality questions, it makes no sense to have mentions of users in posts. When I search the internet for answers and solutions to questions or problems, I want to find content that's suited for me (or anybody else who might land on the network), not content suited for a specific user.

Allowing pings in posts hurts our abilities to build an impersonal knowledge repository with the purpose of reuse.

posted 10 months ago

CC BY-SA 4.0

Andreas witnessed the end of the world today‭

26 19 106 74