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

[valentinite]

Am I the only person who habitually types <user name="name" /> (or, honestly, as my fingers have ten years of history with the old tag, <lj user="name" />) by habit?

...yes, possibly so.

That said, I hate the idea of anything aside from HTML markup and some custom tags being adopted. I'd really rather not have to do &#64; to get plain @.

[whatdoyousee]

Not at all. It's easy enough to remember, especially if you've used LJ/clones for a while. I don't get why people mess it up so much, honestly (or cuts, for that matter). It just...looks a little unfinished.

Oh, habits. I keep adding </ only to realize that I've no idea how to continue and that it wouldn't work anyway, so. But hey, I'm all for leaving it like it is now (old habits die hard). Just no funny symbols or anything.