Support Forums: Prevent overusing mentions

[SergeyBiryukov]

Whether intentionally or not, some people tend to overuse mentions on the forums, partly because in the current UI the username is shown right after the display name, and it's just too easy to copy/paste it.

This is highlighted (twice) in the ​forum guidelines:

Do not abuse mentions, they are not a tool to get faster responses.
...
Do not abuse the @ mention system in the forums. Users on this site can subscribe to a topic, using @ notifications for your replies in unnecessary and can become spammy and abusive. Please use it sparingly.

It would be nice to implement some protection against blind copy/paste.

A couple of suggestions discussed with @fierevere and @sevlad:

1. Make the @ character not being copied, e.g. with content: attr(data-text).
2. Move the link to user profile from display name to username. When clicking on display name, paste it into the reply form.

Thoughts?

[coffee2code]

Make the @ character not being copied, e.g. with content: attr(data-text).

Preventing the mention name from being copied prevents legitimate uses of wanting to copy-and-paste the mention name. And seems like it wouldn't be a11y-friendly?

Move the link to user profile from display name to username. When clicking on display name, paste it into the reply form.

This seems really unintuitive.

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What about just putting the mention name below the display name? It doesn't prevent people from choosing to use the mention name in a post, but seems like it would cut down on people copying a name and including the mention name unintentionally.

I'm attaching screenshots of two variants of this proposal. Option 1​ simply moves the mention name to below the display name, and removes the parentheses. Option 2​ extends option 1 by appending the title/flair after the mention name, so as not to expend more overall vertical space after the change of option 1. The two are separated with a /, but any other separator could be used.

Another option, which can be done in conjunction with my previous suggestion or by itself, could be to add an explicit "Reply" link. Similar to the second proposal in ticket, clicking it would put the display name of the commenter into the reply form. (Extra fanciness where highlighted text from the comment gets added within a 'blockquote' as well.)

[coffee2code]

Proposal of moving mention name below display name

[coffee2code]

Same as my previous proposal, but also moving title/flair to same line as mention name.

[DrewAPicture]

My vote would be for the second option (@mention and title on the same line).

[SergeyBiryukov]

Replying to coffee2code:

Make the @ character not being copied, e.g. with content: attr(data-text).

Preventing the mention name from being copied prevents legitimate uses of wanting to copy-and-paste the mention name. And seems like it wouldn't be a11y-friendly?

Just the @ character, not the whole name. The character could be added manually if the mention is intentional.

Move the link to user profile from display name to username. When clicking on display name, paste it into the reply form.

This seems really unintuitive.

Some would say it's more in line with "traditional" forum software UI, I don't have a strong preference here though.

Another option, which can be done in conjunction with my previous suggestion or by itself, could be to add an explicit "Reply" link. Similar to the second proposal in ticket, clicking it would put the display name of the commenter into the reply form. (Extra fanciness where highlighted text from the comment gets added within a 'blockquote' as well.)

This seems worth exploring further.

[Clorith]

The thought of a "Reply" link was in large part dismissed in our support chats, as it gave too much of an incentive for large multi-user topics that contain multiple problems to address, while we're trying to maintain "one topic, one problem".

If anything, moving it down a line is what I'd go for of the options here, we certainly can't remove it or hide it, as users will then use the displayname with an @ prefixed, which will lead to invalid notifications going out to other users in many cases.

In my opinion, I don't think you'll be stopping any mentions, those who use them will keep using them, especially as using @<name> is so ingrained in internet culture by this point as a way to reference the person you are talking to. Even business software like MS Outlook now use it to reference people in and out of email chains! So policing it isn't possible/worthwhile. If you want to stop it on .org, then the mentions plugin would need to be removed, which isn't an option at all.

[dd32]

I'm going to close this as wontfix now that autocompletion is in place, and that UI makes the original suggestion here invalid (making it harder to @mention someone).

In the event that there becomes a problem with it being overused by certain people, we can consider options, but changing the UI to discourage @mention's isn't going to fix any problems that exist.

Finer-grained tickets targeting specific use-cases (ie. Block mentions from this user, don't notify if subscribed, etc) seem to be the solution here -if actually needed-.