How to tag someone in a post?

[ebastler]

We're here for the underlying logic, reasoning and experience; and not to score personalities or see whose opinion is most popular.
...
I do believe the possible downsides –– misuse by newbies, and misuse by trolls who use the mention mechanism to ensure the targets of their snide remarks will see them, hopefully before the moderators have time to react and remove the post –– are vastly greater than any upsides.

As you say, this isn't social media.

I think this is a telling example how quoting can also be used in detrimental ways. You took Nominal Animal's very detailed and differentiated post and not only chose to quote just a single snippet which suited you, but also paraphrased it in a distorted, biased way to make your point, literally putting words in Nominal Animal's mouth ("As you say...").

Very bad style in my opinion, and potentially destructive for the discussion. Maybe that dangerous quoting mechanism should be disabled here? 

[tggzzz]

I wonder if it's possible to implement this, with the facility for users to opt out, so they can prevent others tagging them?

I like in other forums where when I log in or open the main page the first thing I see at a glance is (1) unread private messages, (2) tags and (3) quotes. That way I can direct my attention first to these things. They are all there very visible.

That's what happens on this website.

I find tags very useful, for example, newbie comes and asks about topic X, he gets an answer or two but someone tags the resident expert on the topic so his attention is called to the thread. Of course he can just ignore the call if he so wishes.

That would piss me off no end; my attention is worth a lot to me, and I don't like others wasting it. That's why I am finally blocking some time-vampire posters and their threads.

If my attention is requested, then have the courtesy of spending your time telling me my in a PM.

It would be a great shame if too an expert was tagged so many times that they decided not to contribute.

[Nominal Animal]

The notification one gets when being "mentioned" is very unobtrusive.

To you.  I have already said I find it distracting and annoying, and even described a couple of patterns I could use to annoy others if I was inclined towards trolling.

Are you saying I'm lying?

[tggzzz] took Nominal Animal's very detailed and differentiated post and not only chose to quote just a single snippet which suited you, but also paraphrased it in a distorted

Distorted?  No, tggzzz was on point.  You, on the other hand, are putting words in my mouth by claiming tggzzz's response was distorting mine.

The correct response on your behalf would have been to ask me, not claim you know what I mean.

Very bad style in my opinion

I'm uncertain.

You see, because tggzzz quoted me, I could easily respond and raise the point; if I disagreed with how I was quoted, I could respond and clarify.

You, however, simply assumed you knew better what was going on in my mind, and assumed your understanding of my post was superior to tggzzz's.
If I wasn't reading carefully, I could even have missed you were describing your understanding of what I wrote as the factual one, which is definitely not okay.  That is exactly why quoting exists, to avoid that situation.

Which one of you is engaging in "very bad style" right now?

More importantly, what kind of an understanding will others reading this thread get from the topic, and our (the three of us) interaction?


In any case, I do find it interesting you do not see any downsides to the mention notification, and even claim it is "unobtrusive" after I explicitly said I find it distracting, and described possible risks to it.  Why do you choose to ignore those points, and simply go on with the discussion as if they were not raised at all?
I consider that social manipulation, but I do not believe for a second you do it on purpose.  I firmly believe you believe you are behaving in a mutually respectful and beneficial way, because this is the accepted behavioural pattern in "neomodern" society, what with its enforced use of gender pronouns, socialist liberalism, and everything right of Stalin being "far right".

It is exactly because I feel you do not do this from malice but only from good intentions, that I am so interested in your responses and assertions here.  If I knew why, I might be able to formulate my points clearer (and hopefully shorter!), you see.

As to emotions, I am feeling zero animosity toward anyone wrt. this topic, and only find it interesting and worthwhile to discuss.  It is these small things that change the nature of communities, without anyone actually intending to do so.  (Just consider my reasons for not participating at StackOverflow/StackExchange, even though I'm kinda-sorta addicted to problem-solving.)  It might look like a tiny, insignificant thing now; yes.

The only thing I am annoyed about is that this does look like a situation I've been in too many times: trying to explain a risk and a danger scenario of a feature/behaviour others see as neat/new/interesting, only to have my argument completely ignored.  After it goes tits up, several times roughly along the same lines I described, they dare claim to my face that "nobody sane could have predicted it", as if I was by definition "not sane".

The best option here would be to disable the notifications for everyone, until SMF provides the option for each member to disable the notifications from mentions.  I've already described a couple of highly negative behavioural patterns it enables, so anyone pooh-poohing this "worry" really needs to explain why they believe an easy tool for trolling would not be used for trolling, against all the proof across every online forum and online social media.

[tggzzz]

We're here for the underlying logic, reasoning and experience; and not to score personalities or see whose opinion is most popular.
...
I do believe the possible downsides –– misuse by newbies, and misuse by trolls who use the mention mechanism to ensure the targets of their snide remarks will see them, hopefully before the moderators have time to react and remove the post –– are vastly greater than any upsides.

As you say, this isn't social media.

I think this is a telling example how quoting can also be used in detrimental ways. You took Nominal Animal's very detailed and differentiated post and not only chose to quote just a single snippet which suited you, but also paraphrased it in a distorted, biased way to make your point, literally putting words in Nominal Animal's mouth ("As you say...").

Very bad style in my opinion, and potentially destructive for the discussion. Maybe that dangerous quoting mechanism should be disabled here? 

I dispute that

I only wished to emphasis my agreement with the part of the post that I quoted, and I paraphrased nothing. The link is there for anybody to unambiguously (unlike mentioning) locate his full message in more detail.

If NominalAnimal thinks I have misrepresented his view, he is free to indicate that.
EDIT: i see NominalAnimal has already addressed your claim, debunked it, and made correct relevant points about it

If you seriously believe quoting is bad, then stackexchange and edaboard should be more to your liking

[tggzzz]

The only thing I am annoyed about is that this does look like a situation I've been in too many times: trying to explain a risk and a danger scenario of a feature/behaviour others see as neat/new/interesting, only to have my argument completely ignored.  After it goes tits up, several times roughly along the same lines I described, they dare claim to my face that "nobody sane could have predicted it", as if I was by definition "not sane".

Yeah, I've been through that too. Bloody annoying.

If ebastler hasn't already experienced it in one form or another, I would be surprised.

Interesting, but unsurprising, to see that you have the same opinion of stackexchange as I do. IMNSHO good for answering questions like "which button do I press to squirdle the floogle", crap for subtle conversations.

[PlainName]

We're here for the underlying logic, reasoning and experience; and not to score personalities or see whose opinion is most popular.
...
I do believe the possible downsides –– misuse by newbies, and misuse by trolls who use the mention mechanism to ensure the targets of their snide remarks will see them, hopefully before the moderators have time to react and remove the post –– are vastly greater than any upsides.

As you say, this isn't social media.

I think this is a telling example how quoting can also be used in detrimental ways. You took Nominal Animal's very detailed and differentiated post and not only chose to quote just a single snippet which suited you, but also paraphrased it in a distorted, biased way to make your point, literally putting words in Nominal Animal's mouth ("As you say...").

Very bad style in my opinion, and potentially destructive for the discussion. Maybe that dangerous quoting mechanism should be disabled here? 

I dispute that

I only wished to emphasis my agreement with the part of the post that I quoted, and I paraphrased nothing. The link is there for anybody to unambiguously (unlike mentioning) locate his full message in more detail.

If NominalAnimal thinks I have misrepresented his view, he is free to indicate that.
EDIT: i see NominalAnimal has already addressed your claim, debunked it, and made correct relevant points about it

If you seriously believe quoting is bad, then stackexchange and edaboard should be more to your liking

Oh boy! And this from someone who creates a huge fuss when I pick the specific thing I am commenting on and quote that, leaving out the irrelevant stuff. *Context*, don't forget, and you did indeed leave out a huge amount in that one.

'SOk, I'm not going to keep on at this,  but a classic 'do as I say, not as I do' was too hard to pass up 

[ebastler]

The notification one gets when being "mentioned" is very unobtrusive.

To you.  I have already said I find it distracting and annoying

Where did you write that? I must have missed it. Maybe your posts were too differentiated and detailed.

Anyway, I'll rest my case. I can certainly live without a fully working mention menchanism and wouldn't want other forum members to suffer from one.

[Nominal Animal]

The notification one gets when being "mentioned" is very unobtrusive.

To you.  I have already said I find it distracting and annoying

Where did you write that? I must have missed it.

In reply #40, or 16 messages previous to your one:

If I could disable the mentions, I would: I find them distracting, clamoring for my attention, when cognitively I don't want to know or react to people talking about me without telling me the context.  I do not understand the purpose of mentions, unless it is exactly to affect emotions (involving connectedness and enticing/manipulating others to at least observe the discussion/thread just because they were mentioned), so in my view, they are purely a social "game", and provide no useful function that private messages or forum advanced search do not already do better.

I am still interested in the reasons for your opinions, because I know the difference is not in any way malicious on either side, and it reveals to me things I do not understand about other people.  The opinions themselves don't interest me, but the reasons behind them do, intensively.

I in no way want to cause you to leave the discussion.  I can understand that my style is confrontational and not "professional"/"nice" or even acceptable at times, but underneath all that really is a honest pursuit of understanding.

Also, I admit, I only realized the negative patterns later, after hearing offline that a common way to "troll" others on various sites that allow both upvoting and downvoting is to upvote, wait a while for the recipient to be notified, then change the upvote to a downvote, in the hopes that it will make the target "sad".  (I can see psychologically why that works, being based on the ol' fairness thing, with the upvote notification giving the recipient a feeling of appreciation, only to have it turn into a downvote, a , giving the double-whammy of a bait-and-switch dopamine kick turned into a "diss".  I think it is just low, and don't want to see that pattern emerge here too.  In particular, mentioning someone in a disparaging post exactly because it makes it likelier the disparaged member will see the post, even if later moderators delete the post.)

[tggzzz]

We're here for the underlying logic, reasoning and experience; and not to score personalities or see whose opinion is most popular.
...
I do believe the possible downsides –– misuse by newbies, and misuse by trolls who use the mention mechanism to ensure the targets of their snide remarks will see them, hopefully before the moderators have time to react and remove the post –– are vastly greater than any upsides.

As you say, this isn't social media.

I think this is a telling example how quoting can also be used in detrimental ways. You took Nominal Animal's very detailed and differentiated post and not only chose to quote just a single snippet which suited you, but also paraphrased it in a distorted, biased way to make your point, literally putting words in Nominal Animal's mouth ("As you say...").

Very bad style in my opinion, and potentially destructive for the discussion. Maybe that dangerous quoting mechanism should be disabled here? 

I dispute that

I only wished to emphasis my agreement with the part of the post that I quoted, and I paraphrased nothing. The link is there for anybody to unambiguously (unlike mentioning) locate his full message in more detail.

If NominalAnimal thinks I have misrepresented his view, he is free to indicate that.
EDIT: i see NominalAnimal has already addressed your claim, debunked it, and made correct relevant points about it

If you seriously believe quoting is bad, then stackexchange and edaboard should be more to your liking

Oh boy! And this from someone who creates a huge fuss when I pick the specific thing I am commenting on and quote that, leaving out the irrelevant stuff. *Context*, don't forget, and you did indeed leave out a huge amount in that one.

'SOk, I'm not going to keep on at this,  but a classic 'do as I say, not as I do' was too hard to pass up 

My objection to clipping is when it is used to distort the statement, frequently in order to create a strawman argument. I think we can both agree that strawman arguments are A Bad Thing.

You will note that Nominal Animal has already explicitly stated that (1) my comments are "on the point", and (2) taken ebastler to task for his response (see below).

Hence I don't see any basis for what you wrote.

[tggzzz] took Nominal Animal's very detailed and differentiated post and not only chose to quote just a single snippet which suited you, but also paraphrased it in a distorted

Distorted?  No, tggzzz was on point.  You, on the other hand, are putting words in my mouth by claiming tggzzz's response was distorting mine.

[ebastler]

I in no way want to cause you to leave the discussion.  I can understand that my style is confrontational and not "professional"/"nice" or even acceptable at times, but underneath all that really is a honest pursuit of understanding.

But I will drop out of the discussion here. No bad feelings, nothing personal. But seeing how intense you and tggzzz get about the "mention" concept, I don't need the agitation and aggravation from trying to "defend" it. And, as mentioned before, my feelings in favor of it are not anywhere as strong as your feelings against it.

[Nominal Animal]

'SOk, I'm not going to keep on at this,  but a classic 'do as I say, not as I do' was too hard to pass up 

Well, we're not perfect, and occasionally pointing it out and accepting it as a fact is probably healthy.  When "me fail", I do feel the embarrassment pretty intensely, but I do also enjoy the laugh at my own expense, how silly and stupid I can be.  I do hope others will laugh at me too when I make such errors.
Keeps me grounded, I think, and it is always good to smile a bit.  I assume the same applies to most others, tggzzz and yourself included.

I for one am assuming good faith on part of everyone participating in this thread.  I see that we're pretty divided, with one set (including myself) seeing only/mostly the negatives, one set describing what they like but not commenting on the negatives, and one set basically observing the discussion.  Am I a Negative-Nelly for demanding attention towards the risks/downsides rather than the positives mentioned?  I don't know, but I do seem to lean that way.  Some do like the feature, it seems, and while it baffles me as to why and how, I do accept it as a cold hard fact and am not trying to change anyones opinion.

Any decisions will be made by Dave et al., of course, and I'm not sure this discussion will sway their choice any.

But I will drop out of the discussion here. No bad feelings, nothing personal. But seeing how intense you and tggzzz get about the "mention" concept, I don't need the agitation and aggravation from trying to "defend" it. And, as mentioned before, my feelings in favor of it are not anywhere as strong as your feelings against it.

Hm.  Feelings?  Agitation?  I am very poor at conveying those in written English, so I'm not sure that 1) the feelings I've unintentionally conveyed here in my posts are real, or that 2) even if real and correctly interpreted, they actually matter at all.  (The stuff that I intentionally convey is usually humour, often self-deprecating; when I convey true anger/disappointment/frustration/negative feelings, I typically use swear words.)

As I see the situation now, there are users who like the feature, some users who find it annoying, and a couple of possible scenarios how the feature could be misused annoying members and possibly having them stop participating.  (I'm not referring to myself!  Like I said, I personally already have workarounds lined up.)

I'd love to see an argument balancing those somehow, or at least acknowledging both sides; and morover, comparing them to real world examples.  The ones I can come up with are all negative, but that may be because my attention focus is naturally oriented that way; a built-in bias.  And that is exactly why I so much like to and appreciate discussing things with people who disagree with me, if they are willing to explain their reasons/reasoning and not just state their opinions 'take it or leave it' -fashion.

[ebastler]

I'd love to see an argument balancing those somehow, or at least acknowledging both sides; and morover, comparing them to real world examples.  The ones I can come up with are all negative, but that may be because my attention focus is naturally oriented that way; a built-in bias.  And that is exactly why I so much like to and appreciate discussing things with people who disagree with me, if they are willing to explain their reasons/reasoning and not just state their opinions 'take it or leave it' -fashion.

Look, I originally brought up this topic in the "News/Suggestions/Help" section out of curiosity. I had noticed a "mention" indicator in my profile for the first time, looked up the relevant post, and wondered how that "@name" mention was created. (It does not work from my account.) I was not aware of this older thread.

I have explained a use case there where I would find mentions helpful. I have also explained that I find the notification very unobtrusive and have shown in screenshots what it looks like. I really don't have more to say and argue about this.

The "mention" mechanism useful in my view, but it is obviously not a necessity. If (some) others find it intolerable, then let's disable it, since the side effects outweigh the benefits.

[tggzzz]

I in no way want to cause you to leave the discussion.  I can understand that my style is confrontational and not "professional"/"nice" or even acceptable at times, but underneath all that really is a honest pursuit of understanding.

But I will drop out of the discussion here. No bad feelings, nothing personal. But seeing how intense you and tggzzz get about the "mention" concept, I don't need the agitation and aggravation from trying to "defend" it. And, as mentioned before, my feelings in favor of it are not anywhere as strong as your feelings against it.

I'm interested in understanding three things about any new mechanism/technology. I listen to the proponents' arguments to determine

• what benefits does it give
• what is the cost (money, learning curve, speed, space,...)
• what are the alternative ways of achieving the benefits

For mentions, the benefits appear minor at best - no more than syntactic sugar or chrome plating. Some of the costs are minor (e.g. how notifications are displayed), but some are potentially major, especially subtle changes in the atmosphere of this forum towards that of other unpleasant timewasting sites. And there are existing ways of getting the benefits. So overall from my perspective the negatives outweigh the positives.

That technique has served me very well in my career, enabling me to avoid investing in shiny new transient toys, but still jumping on seriously good long-term opportunities.

[Nominal Animal]

Look, I originally brought up this topic in the "News/Suggestions/Help" section out of curiosity. I had noticed a "mention" indicator in my profile for the first time, looked up the relevant post, and wondered how that "@name" mention was created. (It does not work from my account.) I was not aware of this older thread.

Ah, okay!  I fully understand your position, then.

I have explained a use case there where I would find mentions helpful. I have also explained that I find the notification very unobtrusive and have shown in screenshots what it looks like. I really don't have more to say and argue about this.

That's okay too!  Although, you could have mentioned you haven't considered any possible downsides, because silence is the absolute hardest response to understand and evaluate correctly.

(As an aside, veering into general discussion mechanisms: participants simply remaining silent about possible errors or omissions is a very negative, destructive pattern.  Even though it stings me a lot, I try to make sure I don't do that.  See this for an example a bit over a year ago.  The value of this may be low-ish for participants, but very high for anyone reading the thread as an non-participant: it will help them evaluate more accurately what is technically correct and what is not, so the data they form their opinion on is more reliable/factual/useful.  In technical discussions and in scientific publications, this kind of 'brutal honesty' is a necessity for the results to be valid, no matter how awkward/uncomfortable socially.  Using a pseudonym in such discussions helps a lot, because the same is obviously not good in a workplace environment: admitting any mistakes ever can be a career suicide in some fields, especially if dealing with customers.  This is my current understanding based on running a company, then switching to scientific research, and participating in dozens of different types of projects.)

The "mention" mechanism useful in my view, but it is obviously not a necessity. If (some) others find it intolerable, then let's disable it, since the side effects outweigh the benefits.

My suggestion would be to disable it until each member can disable the notification of mentions, or, if possible, just disable the notification only.

That is, the @ -syntax turning into a link to the target users profile in a post, with the current username completion mechanism in the post editor, is perfectly fine.  Having them show up in the separate Profile > Mentions is okay, too.  That is similar to how Thanks currently work.
The contention is about whether a new mention should cause the referred to member always get a notification of it, in the form of having the number of new mentions as Profile [N] at the top of the page.

If mention notification (next to the Profile button) is made optional –– compare to PM controls! ––, have the moderators post in Supporters Lounge about the feature, and that if misused, report such posts (perhaps with keywords "mention trolling").  Describe the three most likely negative patterns, i.e. mentioning someone just to say their response was bad/insufficient/wrong/didn't answer the question; mentioning someone just in the hope that they might answer a beginner question (especially for homework-type questions!); and mentioning someone (to generate the notification) but then modify the post to remove the mention, in the hopes that it causes the mentioned member to get the notification but not see it in the target message and "worry" about what it was about.

(I am not sure if the negative patterns should be mentioned in the posting guidance for new posters.  If at all, then only in passing, as in "Misusing this for annoying members or trying to rope them into answering your question is considered trolling, and can get your account banned."  No need to tell trolls the tools they can use for trolling.) (Yes, I am aware that this thread is in the General Technical Chat forum, but I expect it to get buried in the avalanche quite soon, so will only be discovered via forum and web searches.)

I just wish I could express these things clearer and more concisely, and in the first post, instead of incrementally refining via multiple posts.  Very few people will actually read my wall-of-text posts, and I'm not sure Dave and the moderators even have the time to, even if they were interested in the content.

[PlainName]

My suggestion would be to disable it until each member can disable the notification of mentions, or, if possible, just disable the notification only.

Why does it need disabling? No-one uses it so disabling would have zero effect at the potential cost of breaking something.

[Nominal Animal]

My suggestion would be to disable it until each member can disable the notification of mentions, or, if possible, just disable the notification only.

Why does it need disabling? No-one uses it so disabling would have zero effect at the potential cost of breaking something.

Why wait until it is misused? It is not working correctly for all users, either.  For most users, within a post the mentions do not change into links, but when such a post is quoted, they do.

Compare to being proactive wrt. spammers.  You generally don't want to just remove spam messages, you want to prevent them before they happen.  I'm applying a similar logic for this feature here.

I would prefer to keep the useful aspects (i.e., disable only the new mention count next to the Profile button) while discarding the risky or unwanted (by some) aspects, but that would mean additional work.


Just leaving it as-is is the easiest option, but it can bite later on if misused (and I've described how).

The next easiest option is to remove the mentions module, entirely disabling the operation.  It is only built-in in the next version of SMF, 2.1; this is 2.0.19 as of 2024-02-28.

Fixing the behaviour so it works for all users and does not have the annoying, potentially misused features, would require the most work, editing the SMF mentions module itself.

[tggzzz]

My suggestion would be to disable it until each member can disable the notification of mentions, or, if possible, just disable the notification only.

Why does it need disabling? No-one uses it so disabling would have zero effect at the potential cost of breaking something.

The unpleasant consequences have already been explained, several times. "SecurityCivil behaviour through obscurity" is always a poor proposition.

[T3sl4co1l]

All I see is straw men, imagined risks, with easy defenses, and poor excuses not to use them.

Leave it in.

Tim

[tggzzz]

All I see is straw men, imagined risks, with easy defenses, and poor excuses not to use them.

Leave it in.

I don't see straw men arguments.

There are too many solid very unpleasant counterexamples elsewhere for complacency.

The defences against some aspects are easy, but you can't ensure good taste.

The reasons not to use them are good.

[T3sl4co1l]

Dude.  The solution to literally every single little thing you've raised here, is... just kindly ask the admins, they'll clean it up.

If someone's abusing the platform... they're abusing the platform, it doesn't matter how.  Banhammer.  That's the end-all be-all to misbehavior.  No making-oneself-a-victim, no political intrigue, no imminent invasion of communism.

The worst possible thing you've even imagined is a, like, first someone would need to either create an army of puppet accounts, hack existing accounts, or find a password bypass exploit; and all just to target one individual with incessant @-ing, like, how self-absorbed does one have to be to think this would actually happen to them--?  Obviously, such access would be quickly sold to spammers, the forums polluted with junk posts, no one's even going to look at the tag mechanism.  Remember that such access goes well beyond this forum, and would affect all SMFs in the world; that's a big attack surface, and a big spamming opportunity if it sticks.

Or at worst, the whole spampocalypse happens, and they do look at the tag system, and tag literally everyone on the member list.  You're not a victim, everyone is.

Either way, you're talking existential nuclear war on the forum as a whole, the @-system is a completely irrelevant piece of the puzzle, and the forum would be locked or shut down and restored from backups, until such time as the holes can be patched.  It's a DDoS for everyone, not some measly "My Messages [1]" alert? Give me a fuckin' break, really?!

If you have a readability issue, or sensory processing or whatever, that's fine and understandable; it's also up to you, say to craft a CSS that diminishes or hides such annoyances.  If enough users find such annoyance, perhaps integrate them into the plugin -- the correct venue is the SMF people themselves, ask them -- we have very limited ability to customize things here, as I understand it.

Tim

[tggzzz]

Dude.  The solution to literally every single little thing you've raised here, is... just kindly ask the admins, they'll clean it up.

If someone's abusing the platform... they're abusing the platform, it doesn't matter how.  Banhammer.  That's the end-all be-all to misbehavior.  No making-oneself-a-victim, no political intrigue, no imminent invasion of communism.

The worst possible thing you've even imagined is a, like, first someone would need to either create an army of puppet accounts, hack existing accounts, or find a password bypass exploit; and all just to target one individual with incessant @-ing, like, how self-absorbed does one have to be to think this would actually happen to them--?  Obviously, such access would be quickly sold to spammers, the forums polluted with junk posts, no one's even going to look at the tag mechanism.  Remember that such access goes well beyond this forum, and would affect all SMFs in the world; that's a big attack surface, and a big spamming opportunity if it sticks.

Or at worst, the whole spampocalypse happens, and they do look at the tag system, and tag literally everyone on the member list.  You're not a victim, everyone is.

Either way, you're talking existential nuclear war on the forum as a whole, the @-system is a completely irrelevant piece of the puzzle, and the forum would be locked or shut down and restored from backups, until such time as the holes can be patched.  It's a DDoS for everyone, not some measly "My Messages [1]" alert? Give me a fuckin' break, really?!

If you have a readability issue, or sensory processing or whatever, that's fine and understandable; it's also up to you, say to craft a CSS that diminishes or hides such annoyances.  If enough users find such annoyance, perhaps integrate them into the plugin -- the correct venue is the SMF people themselves, ask them -- we have very limited ability to customize things here, as I understand it.

Tim

Er, stop hyperventilating

[Nominal Animal]

There is a reason the Thank user does not generate active notification to the author of the thanked post.  Currently, mentioning another user using the @ -mechanism does.

Why should the reasoning behind the behaviour of the thanks mechanism be different for the mentions mechanism?  Goose vs. gander and all.

Thanking was already a subject Dave started a thread for.  Why should the mention mechanism be any different?

If you think this is a strawman, I don't think you know what a strawman argument actually is.

Or would you prefer a Thanks also generated an active notification and an easier to find list of your thanked posts?  I'm sure it would caress your ego, but I don't think it would help with respect to the quality of discussions, which seems more important than ego stroking to Dave, the owner, here.

[T3sl4co1l]

So, hyperbole aside, a more reasonable take:

There is a reason the Thank user does not generate active notification to the author of the thanked post.  Currently, mentioning another user using the @ -mechanism does.

Why should the reasoning behind the behaviour of the thanks mechanism be different for the mentions mechanism?  Goose vs. gander and all.

Well yeah, you get some stats on your account, if that floats your boat, there you have it, you can check it any time, sure.

But then what's a "mention" for? To draw attention, obviously.

The only meaningful argument, that I've taken in at least, is that it's a (currently unreliable) substitute for PMing someone.  This is a correct take, I would say.

It serves the social function of being an in-public announcement of such; a beacon as it were.  Which, doesn't really mean anything, but I guess if the tag-ee is a no-show in the thread afterwards, that can be understood as messaging a more active disinterest than their simple absence would be.  Or at least, it would be if it worked reliably, but since it doesn't, it...really doesn't mean much of anything as it stands.

The main value, then, is simply to relieve the pressure of composing a personal message.  It's more impersonal, just a tap on the shoulder, nothing more.  Low information, low priority, simple and easy.  It's also, I guess, more persistent: PMs are deletable, mentions aren't (actually, are they ever? that's a bit of a clutter issue, and not one the viewer can address, as mention-ing posts aren't editable by others).

And anything beyond that, is simply normal interaction.  If someone means to pester you, they can do it anyway, whether posting in every thread in existence, PMing, finding other contact information if present -- and the remedy is equally identical: ask mods/admins, or law enforcement for that matter (online harassment is harassment in most any jurisdiction).

What in this am I missing?  How is it that I have not perceived an active harm from this underutilized and poorly known function?  Please tell me.  How could I possibly be abused by it, in such a way that future admin action is not a just remedy?  (e.g. ban offenders, just remove the plugin entirely, it's just a plugin, why are there whole threads on this I can't even--)

Thanking was already a subject Dave started a thread for.  Why should the mention mechanism be any different?

Because the point is to get ones' attention..?  I'm not sure what else to make of it.  Like, I have a "Mentions" section in my profile, it currently has all of exactly two instances for all time, and they are links to posts in threads.  Clearly they are there to direct my attention, if I should so choose to view them.

It certainly doesn't do any good as a number-goes-up game.  Is that how you see it--?

It's not like views, comments or retweets; those mechanisms are meaningless here.  Also whether anyone does, or should, take stock of those variables, is another matter, but they are generally engagement and therefore reflect the spread of content.  Threads show views, that's about all that you can hope for here (though whether they're unique users or repeat visits, would be another matter).

I could imagine value in cross-referencing certain threads, but as no one has interest in doing that, like, y'know, at all, as it is, there's hardly any purpose in compiling links and back-links into a web of knowledge on given subjects.  Not to mention the lack of editability for users other than authors; a wiki this is not.  (And, again, even less collective interest in managing a wiki.)

If you think this is a strawman, I don't think you know what a strawman argument actually is.

The strawman is more in regards to tggzzz's imagined catastrophe, which it seems even hyperbole isn't enough to jar them into actually thinking about it, sadly?

Tim

[PlainName]

There is a reason the Thank user does not generate active notification to the author of the thanked post.

There is? And yet there is a thanks count and all that stuff. Nevertheless, thanks are a lot different to tags and take much, much less effort to spam.

Really, I fail to see a problem. Worst case, if someone should take to annoying someone else they'd have to post a zillion messages to do it, and the catastrophic result of that would be... a fairly large number you got to go looking for at the bottom of a menu.

I am trying not to laugh. And failing 

[thm_w]

Dude.  The solution to literally every single little thing you've raised here, is... just kindly ask the admins, they'll clean it up.
....

Tim

Er, stop hyperventilating

Seems ironic after you got all worked up about strawman arguments.

Or would you prefer a Thanks also generated an active notification and an easier to find list of your thanked posts?  I'm sure it would caress your ego, but I don't think it would help with respect to the quality of discussions, which seems more important than ego stroking to Dave, the owner, here.

I use a forum with a Thank notification feature, and its a complete non-issue. Its just a number at the top you can click on if you desire to (similar to what soldar showed).
It encourages useful/quality posts if anything, because it shows you that people found what you posted of some value.

Not a fan of how Youtube implements the functionality though (where it shows up along side replies, it should be able to be easily ignored).