Twitter Style User Addressing

[zorkian]

Title:
Twitter Style User Addressing

Area:
html formatting

Summary:
It would be convenient and fairly typical of the modern Internet to be able to refer to accounts using a nice shorthand. I propose using the Twitter style: @mark would be the equivalent of <user name="mark">.

Description:
Writing HTML isn't something that comes naturally to many people. Twitter's style of addressing has been used for many years in email (they certainly didn't make it up) and is now gaining broad acceptance as a modern way of referring to other user accounts.

Given that, I think that it would be awesome to type @denise and have it show up as if I had typed <user name="denise">.

Furthermore, I think that it would be great to be able to easily refer to other people on other domains. For example, I think @news.lj would be easier to type than <user name="news" site="livejournal.com">. Even if we had to type @news.livejournal.com that's a lot easier to type than remembering the HTML and exactly what to put in it.

Poll #2493 Twitter Style User Addressing

Open to: Registered Users, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 163

View Respondents

This suggestion:

View Answers

Should be implemented as-is.
66 (40.5%)

Should be implemented with changes. (please comment)
22 (13.5%)

Shouldn't be implemented.
57 (35.0%)

(I have no opinion)
14 (8.6%)

(Other: please comment)
4 (2.5%)

Comments

[sky]

I like the general idea of having a typing shortcut to output a username style tag, but I don't think @username is a good choice for our format. For one thing, I often use @ to refer to my friends by their actual names rather than their journal names. In past entries I've written things like "@Bob: blah blah blah..." But the user's journal name is most definitely not bob. So that's another thing that would cause problems here.

[tifa]

To be honest, it seems like a lot of people are just asking for the same code without the HTML tags (like @username:tifa as opposed to < user name= tifa >), but if that's what works... One is probably much easier to remember thanks to the @username tags being used on Twitter, FB, Plurk, etc. So I guess it's a good idea, but I agree with the others who said the actual formatting should be different then just @username.

[willow]

How would linking to other sites work with that? @mark@livejournal ?

[florahart]

I don't tweet (I don't own a cell; I expect this will in the long run have to change), but I think I think that @user has a meaning besides identifying the user? I mean, doesn't it also send a message to the person? Did I make that up?

So, what I initially thought you meant here was like, @mark would, if Mark had turned on the option (because I trust you people to not opt me in to shit I don't want) send Mark a link to the post or a copy of the post or something.

I am frequently flummoxed by folks who are unable to cope with html, because I am old enough to have been nearly through college before I stopped using a word processing program that used, like, alt-B (or something) to start and end boldface on my (dot-matrix) printer, and I find html in general fairly intuitive because it's practically the same thing, you know? My point with this is not like, how I used to walk uphill in the snow created by the punch-outs in that tractor-feed paper, but just, I think things that are intuitive or transfer with the same behavior from one environment to another are good, so if in fact @ has a behavior on Twitter, then I think intuitively if you use the same thing there will be an expectation of the same behavior. Uh. I think that makes sense?

So I'm not opposed in principle, but I would be concerned that there would be an expectation that isn't met. Unless Twitter really doesn't do that in which case, never mind, carry on, etc.

[beck_liz]

@user doesn't send a message to the user in Twitter. Twitter does, however, mark it for you so it's easy to find when people have mentioned and/or replied to you. On my Twitter there's a "@beck_liz" link on the side of the page, and if I click on it, it lists all tweets that have that in it. More like a tag than anything, I think.

[auroraprimavera]

I don't like this at all. I use @ to refer to so many things: people, time, places, etc etc. I've also gone through all the comments and have seen several people bring up the idea that it could get confusing. If people come over and are used to how Twitter works, they'll expect that by typing @username will also ping back to that user - which, I don't really want (especially if I'm making a locked post and referring to that person for whatever reason, I don't want them to be able to see said post - if that makes sense).

But, I would like to see some HTML short hand for referring to users here on DW and on LJ/IJ. jerico_cacaw had a good idea here about setting up a different style of tags.

Something like: < dw >username< /dw > & < lj >username< /lj >

Also, I don't see how necessary it is to add all those other sites - but then, I can also see how others would want a short simple way to link to the bajillion other sites they're a part of? I don't know.

[angelikfire]

Yes, exactly this.

[damanique]

I found this suggestion via Google because I wondered if there's a user shorthand way of writing that I didn't know about. Basically, I *love* the idea of DW / LJ tags.

But really, I would just settle for only having to type <user name="username" site="lj">. What's frustrating me is having to type <user name="username" site="www.livejournal.com"> when DW could just recognise "LJ" (or IJ, GJ, etc)

I also like @site:name (like @dw:damanique, @lj:damanique, etc) but this is counter-intuitive to the HTML editor (I strongly prefer the HTML editor over Rich Text).

The tags however reach back to how the user tag is used on LJ: <lj user="username"> and may also be more intuitive for people who are new to DW. It's a slightly shorter version compared to the <user> tag that requires an extra attribute when used with another journal site.

[manna]

I don't think it's a good idea to copy another site's convention without actually adopting the associated functionality. It would make DW look cheap and broken.

If there's a widespread desire for a simpler DW markup system, which moves away from HTML, then that issue should be addressed separately.

[trobadora]

I completely agree with this.

[jd]

This idea fills me with loathing and revulsion. Keep Twitter syntax on Twitter; don't try to fix what isn't really broken here. I don't want my @ signs to do anything special. HTML is good enough for the rest of commenting; mixing markup will be confusing.

I will be deeply unhappy if this gets implemented, and will clamor for an opt-out immediately.

[ruisseau]

This is a suggestion that has come up over on LiveJournal before (in fact, once it was me who posted it!).

In general, I think it's a good idea, as you might imagine. However, I do recognize the issues inherent in other uses of the @ symbol. Perhaps, the better way to go is use of a different symbol?

[trixtah]

I personally like the idea of simplified markup, but there does seem to be a lot of objections to the "@" symbol (and I actually agree with some of them - having to escape email addresses would be a PITA).

How about another simple syntax? dw:username (with no space between the colon and username)? Or, to avoid any possibility of problems matching /\bdw\:(\w+)\b/, perhaps sticking in a non-word character like '#" might help: #dw:username. Or two colons: dw::username. Either way, it would obviously also extend to short-cutting for other sites: lj:username and so on.

[aderam]

I like the idea of a shorter way to indicate an off-site user. But I don't like the Twitter markup at all. It's one of the most confusing things I find about the twitter service. My main problem with it is that @ actually means something. It's not just a symbol that we can use to slot in for something else.

Or, let me try to explain this better since I think there is an argument for @username to maintain the meaning of the @ symbol. But to me @ is a locational symbol. The username comes before it like in an e-mail address and it maintains a link to grammar - "I'm meeting username at dreamwidth(.com). Twitter has started using @ as a directional symbol. As is "I'm talking @username." And that doesn't work in my mind.

I would definitely want to either turn it off or still be able to use the html while it's on.

[stormy]

I'm always up for making the HTML easier for users on the site. Especially things that can be typed quickly with no knowledge of HTML. I have to remind friends often how to link to things. If it's possible to make a working shorthand that doesn't interfere with anything else, and without having hassle with an opt off/on, then I think the ability to shorthand usernames would be pretty nice for newer users.

Typing @mark is much faster than typing mark, even for me. Even <@mark> would be nice, as stated in previous comments, but you do run the risk of people never learning the actual mark up that way, too. It's in profiles, and in the FAQ, but I doubt I'd ever trouble myself to link in any other way if I could do it easier!

In addition, I do remember @ referring to both people and places ages ago, but I do like @usernames for referring to people now. And to me the @, being all curly - reminds me of DW's swirl. Mentally, I just make that connection.

I've used Twitter before, but I don't think of '@' as reminding me of Twitter. Dreamwidth has the ability to travel avenues that haven't been touched and come up with ideas that make the site easier. If you start adding a lot of periods and # into short hand usernames, they're not short anymore. Either it has to be super simple, or the same as it is, because the mark up is very easy on its own.

[silveradept]

Can't say I'm that much in favor of this particular suggestion. I like the idea of the reduced syntax, sure, but I'd rather see it implemented like
<user="username.site"> as opposed to the @ address style. Seems more flexible and better pseudocode that we write to do linking of other users anyway.

[faevii]

I'm all for making links less complicated, but not like this. IMHO, any code that's not enclosed in special brackets of some sort has a tendency to be annoying, such as "8)" turning into a random smiley when you don't expect it. But even if you were to make it <@name>, there would still be the problem that new users might expect it to behave in the same way as Twitter shortcuts, i.e. send the other person a notification.

The best suggestion I have seen so far was <dw>name</dw>.

(Come to think of it, why hasn't anyone ever thought of <smiley>8)<smiley> or something shorter to that effect?)

[trobadora]

I seriously dislike the idea of appropriating the @ symbol (which is used in a myriad different ways) for coding usernames. Even if we could turn it off on a by-journal basis, what about commenting in other people's journals?

[lian]

just to clarify, this would be a supplement to, not a replacement of, the html-style user names?

[casspeach]

Like a lot of people I like the idea of making linking to people here and on other sites easier, but I really don't like the idea of using the @ sign. I think it has too many other meanings and uses, and I find it counterintuitive.

I suspect I would get over it, but my immediate response is to wonder if we can't use something else.

[blnchflr]

I'm not daunted by the faux-html in itself, but I do use usernames an awful lot in my posts/comments, and a shorthand would be awesome, *grabby hands*.

[superluminal]

I think such a shortcut would be useful if Dreamwidth were to implement a non-HTML-based markup option (e.g. Markdown or wiki-style markup), but I would find it confusing at the moment since posts are currently written in an extended HTML, and the proposed syntax isn't at all SGML- or XML-like. (Using SGML NET SHORTTAGs would make sense for this from a historical perspective, but I think that would be more confusing than Twitter markup for 95% of users.)

I also am not really fond of Twitter's notation, since it goes against several decades of "user@host" notation for denoting users, and I'd rather not have DW saddled with a briefly fashionable syntax that may well be out of style in a couple of years. (A few years ago something BBcode-ish might have been the "obvious" popular choice, for instance...) The only alternative that immediately comes to mind is "~user", which probably is new to non-Unix users, but OTOH is not really worse than "@user" for folks who aren't Twitterers.

[superluminal]

(BTW, SGML NET (null end tag) SHORTTAGs look like this: <tag/content/, so <dw>xb95</dw> could be written as <dw/xb95/)

[whatdoyousee]

To quote auroraprimavera: Something like: < dw >username< /dw > & < lj >username< /lj >

I like this best. It's got closing tags!

It's cute that the @ symbol kind of resembles DW's swirl, but for me it would be weird to use it like this. @username has been used on so many boards for so many years now; it'd feel like I'm talking to the @person instead of just linking to them.

I've no problem with the weird HTML that's used right now, but a shorter version of that (see quote above) would be awesome.

[auroraprimavera]

As a coder, I have to have closing tags - makes it so easy to see where I've screwed up!

@username has been used on so many boards for so many years now; it'd feel like I'm talking to the @person instead of just linking to them.

Exactly! That's one thing I don't like about Twitter - it's hard to know if there talking to the person or about them :/

[mystiri_1]

Reading the comments to this post has already taught me new html. ^^

I know the basics of html, but only because I discovered the necessity of being able to find where the formatting had gone horribly wrong when I was on LJ, and a lot of the time I have to rack my brain to remember which code to use for usernames, etc, in comments. Anything that makes that easier is ok by me.

[azurelunatic]

Old suggestion is old. Yay community search! Bringing interesting things when we're looking for unrelated things!

I actually like the Facebook implementation, rather than the Twitter one, where typing @ triggers the "did you want to link a user?" automatic process, rather than doing potentially unexpected things with pre-existing text.

I could see this existing quite happily in the RTE, making the RTE useful. HTML editor would continue as it always has.

[matgb]

See, I really want it in comments. I used to never mind typing out the code for a username, but these days I'm so used to Twitter's way of doing it I tend to not bother when typing a throwaway comment, so I just type Az/'Fey/D/whatever assuming who I'm talking to will know what I mean.

This is incredibly lazy, and I don't like it, but...

So while I wouldn't mind it not being in the HTML editor (but I would like to see a highlight/insert code in there actually, is that already planned, really ought to check these things), I really want it for comments, which is wher eI think it's most useful anyway.