I feel like a don’t-notify character, no matter how well it’s documented, would realistically be kind of a hidden feature. Power users would make use of it but the average forum-goer might not ever discover it.
Clicking the generated link to see an option would be pretty hidden too. If there was going to be a UI affordance, it would be nice if it improved discoverability too.
Perhaps an icon on the generated link to encourage a click. Or a popup upon selecting a name from the autocomplete list. Or mcwumbly’s idea from above:
…an element similar to the address list in the direct message composer that would make it explicit which people and/or groups are going to be notified:
Yeah, and not forgetting that in most communities the norm likely is the opposite of what we want here on meta.
What if there were some magicks and a site setting could be enabled to make notifications less noisy by default for members who are mentioned that are not actively involved in a topic already. There could be a popup that lets the poster know and give them the option to notify them anyway:
You mentioned @toddz@tobiaseigen but they are not active in this topic. Are you sure you want to notify them? yes/no/edit post
I imagine that simple yes/no/edit would take less code to implement than mcwumbly’s dialog with per-user selection.
I wonder about the word “active” though. Would it just mean present in the topic?
Like, I’m mentioning mcwumbly without an @ because, while he’s up there, he hasn’t been active in the thread since 2018 and I figure you’ll loop him back in if appropriate. Would a typical user think to drop the @? Or just default to it because of habit or perceived norms, then face an all-or-nothing choice?
Me neither! But when clicking on the @ username seeing a little menu with options (similar to selecting and quoting/editing/explaining text) would be pretty cool.
This is very useful, and since the need to make ‘fake’ non-notifying @mentions is probably a power-user only feature, this might be all we need. Thanks @NateDhaliwal
Could probably make a custom markdown composer toolbar addon that wraps text in <a class="mention"> TEXT </a>. (I did see a TC or plugin that had that sort of custom functionality but I cannot remember which one it is!)
I have also been using an OS-wide tool called Espanso which auto-expands your custom abbreviations to whatever text you want, that could also be useful here for quickly inserting the HTML.
Has this changed in core recently? I’ve just noticed that being mentioned didn’t seem to bump me up to Watching on a topic here in meta.discourse.org - and it no longer seems to on my sites either.
Perhaps the “automatically track topics I enter..” setting? Mine is set at 4 minutes.
(aside: it’s interesting that these settings don’t allow a user to see what the default user settings are on the site, and allow you to reset a pref to site defaults. This is handy for site settings.)
I like this idea very much, and I have at times wanted to mention someone without notifying them.
I don’t know about other languages, but in French, certain accent character keys can be slightly annoying to use because when you write them, they don’t appear right away in the text input[1]. You must press another key, and the output will differ depending on the 2nd key you pressed.
Example with ~, which can be used as an accent.
If you press ~ then Enter, it outputs ~.
If you press ~ then z, it outputs ~z.
But if you press ~ then a, it will output ã.
It’s not that much of an inconvenience but I would not be surprised if some French people don’t know how to write ~ before a letter
Our community should be able to create directories about which people could be contacted for what reason.
The implementation should be as user-friendly as possible so that non-technical people can easily add or change information.
I’m hoping to make use of the benefits of the mentions-UI, like (a) opening the search box after typing @ and (b) linking to the user card from this entry, but without sending a notification to every listed user.
Currently I use [User Name](/u/login) without any of the above features.
I was thinking about something like
[user-directory] … a lot of mentions in Tables … [/user-directory]
Re reading the the Op statement. They mention contact. So it might even be a simple url to send a pm/dm by clicking on a username in a list as well.
ie
Support Team List
Clickable members names that starts a pm/dm fir a particular user clicked.
However your solution would be more eloquent as the user could see full card and choose to message or chat. So your method demoed seems like best solution.
