What on earth is...

[laserblazer]

What's the point?

[localzuk]

When someone mentions you in a post, you get a notification in the top right. So it draws your attention to a topic you may not have spotted.

[powdarrmonkey]

Sweet monkey Tuesdays, we have become Twitter without the character limit.

[webman]

This feature was requested/suggested a while ago. I think it's beneficial.

[Gatt]

@webman: - never even noticed that!

[Edu-IT]

So in theory you could really annoy people eventually by mentioning them poitntlessly? Can you turn off notifications?

[powdarrmonkey]

When someone mentions you in a post, you get a notification in the top right. So it draws your attention to a topic you may not have spotted.

Ah, ok, I'm sold on that one. However, do we have to have a special syntax for it? The tags feature has shown that if it's optional, it won't be used, and if it's not used consistently nobody benefits. I'm of the opinion that any mentioned username should be tagged automatically (and retrospectively) without a twitterism in front of it.

[ZeroHour]

I thought this - except it increased to 1 after I did my test at the top, but not when @localzuk: did it.. interstingly it went to 3 after you did it!

Ahh its the caching that is causing the delay.

[webman]

@Gatt: Here we go @ Username

[ZeroHour]

Ah, ok, I'm sold on that one. However, do we have to have a special syntax for it? The tags feature has shown that if it's optional, it won't be used, and if it's not used consistently nobody benefits. I'm of the opinion that any mentioned username should be tagged automatically (and retrospectively) without a twitterism in front of it.

That would basically involve a script going through every word in every post and comparing it with the username database, aka HUGE load.
We can remove the "@" at the start after the post, its still needed to tag a user.

[ZeroHour]

So in theory you could really annoy people eventually by mentioning them poitntlessly? Can you turn off notifications?

Not yet but I can disable users ability to use the feature so report abuse the usual way.

[tmcd35]

Okay, so where do I see these notifications? They're not e-mailed to me I hope?

[localzuk]

Okay, so where do I see these notifications? They're not e-mailed to me I hope?

Top Right 'Your Alerts'. On your control panel there is a 'Mentions' tab.

[tmcd35]

Top Right 'Your Alerts'. On your control panel there is a 'Mentions' tab.

Got it now! Thanks to @srochford: for mention'ing me in another post

[powdarrmonkey]

That would basically involve a script going through every word in every post and comparing it with the username database, aka HUGE load.
We can remove the "@" at the start after the post, its still needed to tag a user.

Hmm. If it was me, I'd provide a SOAP interface to the username list ("here's a list of words in the post, are any of them usernames", with a SELECT filter) and let the client-side do the matching work. Probably still a bit heavy though.

Getting rid of the "@" in a displayed post after the event would be good though.