About the "don't mention/PM team members" étiquette

[mcwumbly (Dave McClure)]

@RGJ

What about having @username~ that acts as a “silent mention” which suppresses notifications ?

I’ve heard this idea come up a handful of times over the years. Providing the right level of affordance here is probably the trickiest part.

Happy to explore it more in a Feature topic as Tobias suggested though.

[tobiaseigen]

I came across an internal conversation, where James suggested the below. I will also do this going forward when editing a reply to remove an at mention. It’s gentler than adding a reply or sending a PM to inform a new member about etiquette.

@JammyDodger

If they’re isolated incidents from users who are unfamiliar with the etiquette then dealing with it with an edit and edit note can often be enough of a nudge for them not to repeat. This also leaves a note in the edit history for others to read when they see one has been removed (for the nosy parkers ). If not, then a friendly PM from a community moderator making the expectations more explicit would generally be sufficient. If ignored then that would be grounds for official warnings/moderation route, etc.

[Heliosurge (Dan DeMontmorency)]

@tobiaseigen

All that said I suspect this is very much a meta problem. Most communities have the opposite requirement. They need these notifications to stimulate more engagement and encourage people to come back and continue the conversation when they are mentioned or quoted

Indeed and of course this can often create parity confusion conflicts with new members. Who have already been indoctrines in other forums/platforms in this fairly common practice outside of Meta. But I do appreciate the reasoning as why they prefer it not to be used.

However @RGJ Dynamic groups idea might be an interesting path. What if a group could be used or maybe an extension to groups that has a setting to similar to @groupmentions that restricts who can @mentuon individuals within the group? Those who are not permitted ut becomes as @Moin suggested a silent mention.