When atting someone, you may write something about their relevant experience that they probably might not want to talk about in that particular topic.
Not everyone might like when you force-invite them by mentioning in a topic. This may make others think they the invitee ignores the invitation.
The main point, though, is that they might not like the introduction you make about them in context of the topic. I prefer people do it on their own. And I prefer giving the flexibility to silently ignoring my invitation without traces in the topic, so I just use “Invite” button, that’s all.
But I use it “intelligently”
I only invite people when they are online and …
…let me avoid content duplication, read more about how we invite people to participate here:
Hmmm, thinking about it, if it’s always the OP (considered to be the topic) that is sent, it would at times be nice to have an excerpt of a different post in that topic instead. eg.
How do I solve XYZ?
Try A
Try B
Try C
Try D
If somemember might not know much about ABC but I know he’s keen about D, and I invite him. there is some chance he might shrug off XYZ without reading the topic through, but if he saw D he would be more interested.
I don’t know if having per post invites would be a good approach, and sending a Message would cover it, But having a way to choose the excerpt if not too difficult to implement and considered useful enough could work.
@mcwumbly where would this context go for existing users, as all we do is send a notification in the notification panel, which is literally a single line. There’s no email to hold the extra content…
I think that’s only sent if the user isn’t active on the site at the moment. Normally it is a simple one-line notification in the notification panel.
So at the moment it would be “enter this optional text, which may be completely thrown away and never seen if the user is active on the site at the moment”. Is that OK? I dunno.
I wasn’t sure what the flow was until the answers in this topic so far.
It would probably only make sense to allow extra text for existing users if it automatically converted the invite to a PM (kind of like what happens in the “I want to message the user” part of the flag dialog).
Sorry to revive an old topic, but this one names precisely my question. On our hosted Discourse, I’ve noticed somewhat recently that the ability to invite an existing user to a topic has disappeared.
It used to be that the Share button would give the choice of notifying an existing user or sending an email invite to a (potentially) new user, or creating an invite link. Now there is only the option to send an email or create a link, but no option to send the notification only.
I have not been able to find another topic here on meta where this change was discussed.
Oh, okay, well that explains it. Too bad: I found this feature useful for updating certain members, who I know may not check our forum frequently, but who participate in video conferences that we organize through the forum, about upcoming events. I suppose mentioning would accomplish the same thing.
Thanks for pointing me to the that topic, which hadn’t come up with my search terms.
You’re welcome, I’m kinda bummed they removed it, too. I wish it stayed and added an option to include context around the notification, like a short 140-chat message or something.
Perhaps it may see a resurgence when chat becomes fully integrated, as I can see notifying someone by chat message seems a simple way to do it and can allow that short context (aka not needing a full subject like a private message might).
Because what I’ll do as a workaround, especially from mobile, is probably copy the link and paste it in Signal or WhatsApp, and I’d rather not, preferring to keep people within the Discourse site.
I’d say yes it’s mostly about friction for me. Right now from the mobile app, it seems like quite a few jumps for me to take this and share it via a Discourse private message or private chat (I assume by DM you meant private chat message).
Ideally, when I click on the date of the post, it would give me an option to “Send as PM or send as chat” (I’d prefer chat) and would give a little box for me to add a message and when I click send it would send both the link to that post (or topic if from the topic share) and the short message I added.
For example, I thought the the mail button in the share dialog would send a Discourse private message but it actually opens up my email client.
To do this now, especially on mobile, I think would require me to copy and paste the link, go to chat or search to find that person’s profile, then click, then send chat, then type and paste.
So yea, I think I would just prefer it to have fewer steps.
We are prioritizing heavily external sharing via Email and other means, but not leaving any path for easy internal sharing outside of “new topic”.
I am not sure what the right thing is to do here. Share via email is great for onboarding new users to a forum, not sure we want to remove it.
However, I can see merit for a “1 click” share via DM or PM in that dialog. (one that simply opens up the composer pre-filled)
Work around for now is to use this, which works great from mobile and pre-fills stuff! Or copy URL and click through to DM list.
Not sure something needs to change here, but it is certainly an interesting observation. The existing features cover the functionality we removed A-OK, it is just that there is high friction.
If the data shows that almost nobody is using the feature, I don’t see the point of dedicating extra engineering resources to it… why build a feature that, statistically speaking, nobody uses?
If I want to get someone’s attention about a topic, why wouldn’t I just press reply on their post in the topic, quote their reply, (assuming they replied to it) or @name mention them in the topic when I reply to the topic?
Hey @george what are your thoughts on this topic?
So this is even more specific… for some reason you want to bring a particular topic to the attention of another user, but only privately and not in public for … reasons? It seems like such a very teeny tiny narrow use case, it’s no wonder it is getting so rarely used.
