Track mentions

[desh]

Title:
Track mentions

Area:
notifications

Summary:
Enable users to track when they're mentioned elsewhere on DW.

Description:
Any time someone writes an entry with <user name="desh"> (desh) in it, that should fire off an event that I can subscribe to and be notified for.

Ideally, this would fire every time an entry is posted that I have access to and that mentions my name, every time an entry that I have access to is edited and mentions my name but didn't mention it pre-editing, and every time the access rules for an entry are edited such that I now have access to it and my name's in it. (It's probably a bad idea to also notify for all old entries any time someone adds me to their access list, though.)

The same would happen for new/edited comments (either as a separate "when I'm mentioned in a comment" event, or as part of the same "when I'm mentioned anywhere" event).

EDIT: There are a lot of variations and pros and cons discussed in the comments below. For those who are not interested in reading all of it, I'd like to direct you to this thread, in which a so-far-noncontroversial modification is discussed.

Poll #2387 Track mentions

Open to: Registered Users, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 51

View Respondents

This suggestion:

View Answers

Should be implemented as-is.
11 (21.6%)

Should be implemented with changes. (please comment)
17 (33.3%)

Shouldn't be implemented.
19 (37.3%)

(I have no opinion)
4 (7.8%)

(Other: please comment)
0 (0.0%)

Comments

[desh]

In other words, I think that if there's a global opt-in/out setting that controls whether these events fire, I think the setting should be per poster, not per journal in which the posts happen.

[ratcreature]

I disagree with this. The search inclusion is per journal too, i.e. I can't even find my own old comments again in other people's journals if someone disabled search (except that I get copies mailed so I can search through my mail, but not on the site).

I think it wouldn't be fair to someone that my settings which are aimed to get as much exposure as possible for my content would carry over in other people's journals just because I comment there with "I agree that user X is an idiot" with the username coded, and would trigger an alert and bring unwanted drama, when originally the post where someone said "X is an idiot" did not trigger an alert because they have their settings to "obscure", and the poster maybe knew that their circles didn't overlap, so normally X, if I hadn't commented, would have had almost no chance to come across that post, and no way to search for it.

[nacbrie]

Well, would a security setting that respected both journal and personal levels work? EG user X has settings to maximum exposure, user Y has settings to maximum obscurity; if X comments in Y's journal, notifications are not sent, and if Y comments in X's journal, notifications are not sent from Y's comment even if notifications are sent from the post and every other comment.

[ratcreature]

I wouldn't mind that, that you'd control the notification both for your journal and your comments elsewhere.

Though I think the option discussed above with a flag to trigger notifications would probably easier to get used to, and avoid having yet more settings about privacy and exposure that you have to keep in mind. Instead you'd get an easy way to ping someone for a discussion only if you want to, instead of it being like a Voldemort invocation, where you'd either need to take protective measures via various opt-outs or resort to "he who must not be named" monikers to avoid triggering this stuff.

[ciaan]

But I wouldn't want someone to be led to what I said in my journal via what someone else said in my journal. Because then I as the journal owner would be suffering the consequences of the commenter's actions, and that is not good.