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up vote 36 down vote favorite
4

I imagine it having a similar format to tags and use the user's id (or at least acquire it from a pasted link)

[user:315024]

and

[user:http://meta.stackoverflow.com/users/315024/walf]

would get converted to the former on save.

Then, mentioning users would survive name changes rather than add confusion.

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19  
Or even just reformat a bare profile URL, like what happens for question URLs now. – yellowantphil 2 days ago
5  
Not really sure this is all that useful. Posts don't really need to contain links to users profiles. – DavidG 2 days ago
1  
And the name changes don't make any difference (e.g. meta.stackoverflow.com/users/315024/walf-is-a-lovely-person) it's the ID that is important. The same goes for posts too. – DavidG 2 days ago
3  
@DavidG we take addressing/mentioning users in comments for granted; It seems short-sighted to lack this in posts. Name changes do make a difference; I know links use ID but people mention others by name (not links) in comments and posts, and when a mentioned user changes their name, the textual references are not updated. – Walf 2 days ago
1  
Comments are very different things to questions and answers. What benefit do you get from seeing a users name in an answer for example? You almost always want to link to a post instead. Also, I'm not against this (not my DV) I just don't think it's all that useful (hence no upvote either) – DavidG 2 days ago
1  
@DavidG Can't link to comments, so you cannot credit/address a user who hasn't posted an answer from within an answer. I think the main benefit is that mentions would be consistent everywhere, stand out more than plain text, and would always be canonical. E.g. if you changed your name now, my @ tags addressing you would show your new name. – Walf 2 days ago
1  
Actually, you can link to comments, this was your previous one. But you shouldn't as comments are ephemeral and may go away at any time. I just think those bits in answers have no place being there. If you want to credit a user do it in comments... – DavidG 2 days ago
2  
There is UI to link to comments, it's just not obvious - click on the time of the comment. But like I said, if a user has commented, you either suggest to them that they put it as an answer themselves, or comment that you're doing it. An answer should stand alone and not have any fluff in it. That's why editors remove text like "thanks" and "hope that helps" all the time. – DavidG 2 days ago
1  
@DavidG So there is. And if you update an answer of yours based on comment feedback, you mention that user, right? So why not have that mention be a link? What advantage does a plain text name (that can become incorrect) have over a link, the text of which can be updated dynamically? – Walf 2 days ago
7  
I don't think it's ever wrong to credit someone for their work. – Walf 2 days ago
10  
Credit is for questions and answers, not comments. If a users want attribution, let them make a post. – DavidG 2 days ago
1  
On the whole topic of the name staying correct if it ever changes - you'd probably find that the name remains incorrect in the post until such time that it's edited since the HTML for a post is cached based on the markdown. I can't imagine they'd want a process to go scan through all posts re-updating user names every time one changes, nor keeping an extra table of which posts contain which users, so they only have to update those ones. – James Thorpe yesterday
2  
@DavidG Comments or chat or face-to-face or social media or email or... They could contribute in many, many ways, and still deserve credit. – wizzwizz4 yesterday
2  
I often mention a user when I'm taking something from their question/answer. It just feels right to give credit where credit is due. – Gabriel yesterday
1  
@yellowantphil I think that comment is worth making into an answer. – jpmc26 yesterday
up vote 1 down vote

This is just an idea. I'm not sure I'm fully in favor of it myself, but I think it's worth throwing on the table for someone to think about.

We could look at hijacking the existing notification syntax for this:

@315024

Advantages:

  • Everyone is already used to typing this syntax. So much so you already occasionally see it in answers when referring to another user even though it doesn't do anything.
  • There's already existing code to provide auto-completion of this that could potentially get reused. It code be reworked to replace with the user ID on insert, and the user name would get rendered on the page.

Disadvantages:

  • If reusing existing code, it would probably need to maintain similar limits on who can be referred to (like only users who have interacted with the current question).
  • You'd probably have to put tick marks if you want the literal text instead. (I'm not convinced this is really a bad thing.)

Anyway, just a thought to consider.

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Usernames are not unique, so it'd be fine if the @name syntax was converted to an id on save. @1234, seems less intuitive and less mardown-ish than the tag syntax. – Walf yesterday
    
@Walf I think you'd have to do it in the Markdown source itself and then render it with the actual name. Otherwise, you'd be modifying the post after the user hits save and before they can preview. – jpmc26 yesterday
    
Then it would apply to all existing posts, retrospectively which could be awful. – Walf yesterday
1  
@Walf Not necessarily. From what I understand, the HTML is pregenerated and stored in the database on save. Also, what in the heck would you be doing typing @63434 outside of a code block anyway? – jpmc26 yesterday
1  
Nobody sees the irony of not mentioning yellowantphil in this answer and giving them credit? – DavidG 21 hours ago
2  
@DavidG yellowantphil suggested formatting a bare URL. I considered hijacking the existing notification syntax to be quite a different idea. – jpmc26 14 hours ago
    
@DavidG How are http://meta.stackoverflow.com/users/315024/walf and @315024 alike? I think you've commented enough to make your point clear, anyway: when someone else does some work, you want all the credit unless they've posted a complete answer. – Walf 11 hours ago

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