📢 @mentions

Okay, so the idea is that you can @mention someone and they'll know they've been @mentioned, right?

Gonna need some help with this one.

Adding @mentions

The system will look in post bodies for them.

e.g.I guess we'll look for names starting with an @, then a string of alphanumeric including underscores and full stops - and trimming trailing full stops.

Knowing you have @mentions

Something on your profile picture, like with PMs?



Clicking the notification

A dropdown menu of where you've been mentioned with a link to go there?

Clicking a link removes it from your list?

If you can make that work, it'd be neat. I'd call this far from a priority but if it happens, I'd see it as a positive

If it's not a priority or it's just a nice-to-have then I'm not going to do it.

It could be a pain to implement.

That's what I thought. To me, it's not a priority. But let's see what others think

If you do implement this --and I not sure it is worth it for v1-- it can also link into the email notification system, maybe add a profile option for it so players can choose.

Voted: meh
Adam
bowlofspinach
vagueGM

Yet to vote
Qralloq
Harrigan
Antiproduct
Keleth
Skeptical_Stun

I'd add a Meh vote, maybe 1.5 mehs. This would be useful in a limited sense, and may take off enough to draw the culture closer together, but creates a bunch of problem situations we'd need to think through: such as, what if you're @mentioned in a non-public forum to which you don't have access?

And with 4.5 mehs and only 4 kinGPins left to vote, @mentions have failed their death saves.

I know it's been killed, but I actually think this is a good idea.

We've all been in situations where a post goes unread for a while because we just don't have the creative energy right now. "Oh, I've only got a couple minutes, I don't have time to read one of skeptical_stun's long, self-glorifying, diatribes right now". But this time it was a question about rules, or a clarification on one of your actions. Because it goes unanswered, it could slow the game down by a day or two, especially if it's in combat.

Email might also be a good idea, but I know how slow that can be sometimes. It would be lovely if it could send you the text of the post containing your @mention, but I don't know how difficult that would be.

Now that I've said all that, it might be too much work to add it to v1 and then lose it when v2 eventually releases. I don't know the timeline or how much work it would entail to move it all over.

I think the Unread feature kind of solves that for me.
I used to not always open threads roght away because I didn't know how big the current post is. With Unread, I can open and if it's too much for right now, just mark as unread and go back to it later.

It's too early to say if that works out in practice for me though

You may be right, for now it seems like a minor issue. If GP grows into some kind of monster where we've got a score of new threads every day and hundreds of new posts, this might be a bigger issue. For now I can read every post that comes across this website (in the non-game forums), but if it grows large enough I'll have to give that up.

*I* think it's a fabulous idea... but I think it's perhaps a good idea to incorporate more deeply into V2.

Edit: also consider the use case where you can @summon someone to a regular forum thread they are not currently watching. Think Discord -- you can instantly bring their focus where it's needed. Including calling for @admins.

I think I see. I might have been premature calling time of death.

I wonder what @Antiproduct thinks.

I've started using it and I'll pretend it's working to see how it feels.

Emails already contain the text for PMs, so the mechanism is there. It would really help if they subject line also contained the threat name and maybe poster so we could know at a glance it we care.

Ah! So you're thinking that an @mention is just an automated PM?

No, I was addressing the topic of the emails containing the text of the message.

If we can get the emails working better then sending players an email notification should be added to this (with an option for them to toggle it on or off, as we have with other email sending).

'Notifications' should extend past the site, so they work even if the player has not opened the page. That way they know to come to GP and take a look.

---

I do like the proposal of having them show up like the PMs, and that could be achieved by using the PM mechanic. But PMs are rather clumsy here, and I don't want my inbox filled with more than it has to have.

If you are adding indicators to the profile picture: Can we move the current 'player joined your game' nagbar (and the new one) to there as well? That way it show up on more than just the home page.

Mentions can be quite handy. We could wait for v2 though. We've been using Discord as a temp workaround.

What about that Discord bot idea? The one that involved snippets of posts? Would it work with mentions as well?

I'm not the tech savvy, just having ideas popping in my head.

I might dig that code out for discussion. The feeling last time was that it might push ooc to discord.

Right, right... But most occ kinda is there though.
I'm in games that do have a discord server and some people prefer to use the GP ooc thread.

Whereas I've been in nearly two dozen games, and only one had a discord channel (which was never used, but the game quickly died anyway). I don't know whether it's to be encouraged.

I am very reluctant to promote more reliance on Discord. The site features should work without outside tools.

Everyone here is using GP, not everyone is using Discord. Splitting the community is very dangerous, many a community has died because of such splits, when only some members are part of import discussions.

Agreed. I like having ooc on discord but many games I've been in had it on site. And not everyone has or wants discord so I think GP should stay the default, not the pushed option

I think I might be in the minority about using Discord to send notifications. I like it, to be honest. I like being notified when someone has something they want to ask or tell me, or reference something I've discussed. I wish there was a way to send a notification to my phone when a game I'm in is updated because I hate playing the F5 game. "Hey, it's been an hour, let's check GP aaaaand...nope."

I know not everyone feels that way, but I figured I can be the dissenting voice :)

I don't think anyone is debating the value of a more immediate notification system, but I don't think Discord is the right way to do that.

Hopefully v2 will have 'desktop notifications' from the browser and mobile push notifications as well (though that might require an App).

Getting the emails working on time seems like the obvious solution.

But this is about @mentions, which I think is a good idea, not about Discord.

Right, but until there's a phone app (big 'if' there) Discord may be the only easy way to implement push notifications (other than email, which can be quite lagged). There's a lot of users that don't use GP on a desktop often, if at all. I'm around 50/50 on desktop/phone usage.

How many people here have iOS phones?

Might be a good subject for a poll in the General Chat forum. I'm an Android user.

Or check the analytics. @keleth do you have those?

This one's complicated. There's zero question that Discord can be used very effectively for OOC chatter and notifying when people owe / need to see something in the game. I've been using it that way for Tavern Keeper games for a couple of years now, and it works really well. And it does suck to have to rely on a different tool, and to potentially split the community. Not even "split" -- it's more like an impediment to its evolving and growing and maturing.

This is why I suggested @mentions to begin with. Email notifications do me no good -- I skim email once a day and check it thoroughly every few days. I try to keep up with all the traffic on the site, but sometimes I can't, and this is where @mentions could help as well since you can bring the focus right to the post in question.

I'm an iPhone user, btw.

See GP thread for discussion. (GitHub)