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

[mskala]

If someone's talking about me, that's my business, period. I'm not in favour of allowing a way for someone to make a mention but turn off the notify. Granted, there are a thousand and one ways they can accomplish it on their own (for instance, mentioning the name without using the tag), but I'd prefer that the system not offer "turn off the notify" as a supported feature.

[kerravonsen]

If someone's talking about me, that's my business, period.
Actually, no. It is also the business of the person doing the talking.

[mskala]

Fair enough. But when it's happening in public, I think I have the right to know about it.

[coraa]

I think this must be a fundamental difference of opinion about public discourse, because I don't feel that I have the right to notification about statements about myself, even public (or semi-public) ones.

[mskala]

Possibly. Do you think there's some sense in which a statement on a Dreamwidth journal and not friends-locked, is less than really "public"? That seems to be where you're going when you refer to "semi-public." My point of view is that public is public, in general, and when something is on the freely available Net it can't meaningfully be said to be less than fully public.

[coraa]

Well, semi-public is security-through-obscurity. But I think that's tangential to my point, which is that there's a difference between the right to find something public, and the right to be notified of something public. People have the right, of course, to find things that are on my public journal that are about them and, within the bounds of my comment settings, to respond to them. But I don't think they have the right to be instantly notified of things on my public journal that are about them.

The major distinction for me is one of activity. I am fine with people finding something I posted. I don't, necessarily, feel that I need to notify them, even by the passive mechanism of having a notification sent when I link to their name. And I think that's secondary to the question of public vs. semi-public: I don't feel in any way obliged to notify people whenever I talk about them, even in a fully public journal. If they want to find every instance of when they're talked about, I think it's reasonable of me to be able to say: fine, but the onus is on you to do the searching. I don't have to make it easier for you.

(If you're thinking, why on earth does she talk about people enough that it's a concern... I write book reviews fairly frequently, often of people who are on LJ/DW. While I'm fine with their finding my post and commenting, I don't like the implicit invitation-to-reply of notifying them. My reviews are for the readers, not the writers.)

[mskala]

It seems to me that if Dreamwidth provided the feature under discussion, it wouldn't be you making it easier for someone you mentioned to find out that you'd mentioned them, but Dreamwidth making it easier. (Another reason NOT to give posters the choice of opting out - then it's more clearly not their responsibility.) It's easy to imagine some other third party (such as Google) providing a similar service. Maybe you'd attempt to block Google indexing - which raises other issues, of course - but some other search engine might not respect the block. Since this kind of service is already available to those who want it, why not level the playing field by having Dreamwidth offer it to everyone? As long as you put your comments where strangers can view them, I think it's okay for the subjects of your comments to not only find, but also be automatically notified about, your comments.

I'm thinking about this from the point of view of drama avoidance, too. Others on other threads have suggested that the feature as described would be an invitation to drama, but I think it's quite the reverse. Drama comes from "s/he was talking about me behind my back!" Making it easier for people to know when they're being talked about means it won't be "behind my back" so there's that much less drama possibility - and if that encourages posters to be more careful about what they say about each other in public, all the better.

[coraa]

See, you seem to be arguing that, because it's impossible to keep people from finding you, that you might as well add a feature to notify them. And I think I just don't agree with that.

[mskala]

Yes. I don't think we can draw a meaningful line between "find out" and "be automatically notified."

[coraa]

Whereas I see a major and very important distinction, hence my initial comment about fundamentally different models.

For what it's worth, the drama I saw most in the last two years was not 'someone is talking about me behind my back,' but 'someone said something critical of my work.'. Easy notification would make that worse, not better.

[nacbrie]

Well, I agree with coraa, there is a difference. If I mention Foo in a public post, I'm posting with the knowledge that Foo might find the post, through friends' friends or searching or whatever, and I'm posting public because I'm happy that that may happen. But it's not the same as sending Foo an email saying "O HAI BY THE WAY I WAS TALKING ABOUT YOU HERE", especially if the post/comment is saying something like, "I really don't like how Foo and others have behaved during the current debate," or "Foo's last story was, frankly, crap, I liked their work so much better when they were working in SGA fandom." It's taking an active step in telling Foo, instead of accepting that Foo might find out.

This goes double because the proposal, if implemented opt-out, is modifying an existing feature - by using <username="foo">. People use twitter/facebook with the knowledge that people will be notified if they're tagged in a photo, for instance.

It's equivalent, I reckon, to writing RPF and posting it publicly, and emailing it to the people in the story saying "I wrote this really hot porn between you and your colleague."

[mskala]

I don't understand why you think the poster is the one sending the email. It seems clear to me that it's the system - a third party - doing so. As a result it's not much different from something like the "Email me with new search results for this query" feature provided by some search engines.

I also don't think RPS is a strong example if you're looking for things that it would be a shame to inhibit...

[nacbrie]

Obviously the system is sending the 'You've been mentioned in this post/comment' notification, but it's the user who has mentioned the second party and is causing the notification to be sent. So, my choice to use <user name="foo"> as opposed to "foo" or "the user who shall not be named but has a jumping bunny icon and who's name rhymes with "moo" and begins with "f"," is equivalent to sending an email to Foo myself, albeit a little more passively and one presumes a more usual behaviour.

I've used the example of RPF, not because I particularly approve of the venture, but because it's widely regarded that putting such material in a public post is not the same as emailing Jude Law saying, by the way, I wrote this porn story between you and Robert Downey Junior, do you like it? I used the example to highlight the difference between passively making information available if one seeks it, and shoving it in a person's face. I think coraa says it well above.

Also, just because someone is able to do something using an external search engine does not mean that they should de facto be able to do it with Dreamwidth. That's silly.

[mskala]

The point isn't that Dreamwidth should do everything that an external search engine might do - though I'd rather see a stronger argument against that proposition than just declaring it "silly". The point is that because an external search engine can implement this feature, then it doesn't make much difference whether Dreamwidth does it too. The stakes for the posters are so low if this is implemented or not that we shouldn't allow posters' preferences to be the only consideration.

[denise]

Your average user will not make that distinction in the least.

[mskala]

Which distinction won't users make? Between the system sending an email and the poster sending an email? Or between "notify me of new search results" in a search engine like Google, and "notify me of new search results" in the context of Dreamwidth? Either way I think it comes down to how it's presented; but I'm not sure there's much point going further with that, because it certainly won't work if there isn't the will to make it work, and I think it's clear that will isn't here.

[nacbrie]

Oh, I think there is a will. The (loose) consensus seems to be that notifications would be a good thing, but that they'd be opt-out or (more likely) an altered version of the name tag such as <user name="nacbrie" notify=yes> (possibly opt-out as well), or if usernames are shortened then something like @nacbrie vs. @nacbrie*.

RE the 'silly' comment: well, to elaborate further, Dreamwidth operates according to its own protocols and terms of service, based upon what denise and mark think serve the site, its users, and their wishes best. And those terms of service and protocols, and indeed the culture of Dreamwidth, place an emphasis on users being able to control their levels of privacy which includes the visibility of 'public' content. The logic that "I can do this via an external site, so there is no problem being able to do it via Dreamwidth" ignores that fact. And, indeed, the point that "well, external search engines can ignore robots.txt files, so an equivalent behaviour by Dreamwidth is no different" is ludicrous, given that Dreamwidth explicitly provide ways for users put in robots.txt files in the first place.

Your point that "I can already do this with an external search engine, so it won't be much of a shock if Dreamwidth does it" fails to stand. As explained above, the notifications feature is a very different beast to searching for one's name on the site. The former is a passive method of receiving notification, whereas at the moment one has to go actively looking for instances of one's name. The burden is shifted from the user who is mentioned to the poster. Only a very small number of users actually go looking for their names.

[mskala]

I think that if posters can opt out of it, then there's not much point having it. But since it's clear I'm not going to convince you of that, and you've now called my point of view both "silly" and "ludicrous" as well as ignoring important things I've said while accusing me of doing the same to you, I don't think there's much point our continuing to discuss it.

[nacbrie]

If that's how you choose to view it, then fine.