usually I’d rather use the mention feature (@) rather than the invite button at the button of a topic. because when I mention someone, I can explain him the reason of mentioning.
but:
when the cm wants to invite several users to a topic, each for different reasons, the topic becomes ugly if he use mentioning in a reply.
also in a fruitful discussion, where everyone is making arguments about the main subjects, jumping in and saying “I think @someone can help in this matter” is like a noise!
also this feature already exists for the global invitations! and I’m sure some of the reasons why it felt needed there, also fits this situation.
at the end, may you extend the customize-able messages also to the invite button at the end of each topic?
I just encountered this today. @erlend_sh invited me to an old topic. With invites you start at the top of the topic. As such, I was reading through 1+ years of discussion, with zero context. I ended up messaging him separately to figure out why I was invited. Having a “message” when inviting a user to a topic would have resolved this by allowing @erlend_sh to tell me in the invite why I was invited.
Staff to staff, possibly, but a whisper is visible to all staff, where a message on the invite is not. Whisper also will not work for non-staff invites.
Part of it is noise. The topic is bumped for all site staff, which does not need to happen for one staff to tell another staff member about it.
Also, the whisper is “public” (to staff), whereas a invite is not. If one staff member wanted to tell another staff member something about a topic, they shouldn’t need to tell the entire staff.
