Timeline for Don't remove the @ part of my comment
Current License: CC BY-SA 3.0
24 events
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| Sep 6, 2015 at 12:43 | history | bounty ended | Arjan | ||
| Aug 30, 2011 at 6:49 | comment | added | Jeff Atwood |
@dave I'd argue the long tail is ~6 million posts (2 million questions) with 1 or 2 comments that all say @postowner unnecessarily. We'll just have to agree to disagree here, for the forseeable future. And just as a reminder, if you feel an urgent need to add an "in reply to" in a comment, do the same thing you do in real life: type their name. Like so: Dave. Not so difficult, is it?
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| Aug 30, 2011 at 6:43 | comment | added | Dave DeLong | @Jeff in addition, there are over 600,000 posts on SO that have at least four comments (so about 1 in 10), and nearly 50,000 posts that have at least 10. So even though the majority of posts won't benefit from the added context, the long tail of posts will. Isn't that what Stack Exchange is about? Catering to the long tail? ;) | |
| Aug 30, 2011 at 6:40 | comment | added | Jeff Atwood |
@dave we only remove @postowner when the only people talking are the post owner and 1 other person, and there's nobody else the comment could be directed to. Were you unclear about that? Feel free to test it if you don't believe me.
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| Aug 30, 2011 at 6:38 | comment | added | Dave DeLong | @Jeff The prefix is there for context and clarity. Do you go about deleting parts of answers just because they take up space? Signatures are one thing; they don't add any value to the question. These "in reply to" prefixes do add value, because it's extremely difficult to follow comment threads of 4+ comments without them. I know the content here is cc-wiki, but please don't insult our intelligence by assuming that part of our contributions are inherently worthless and simply "take up space" | |
| Aug 30, 2011 at 6:32 | comment | added | Jeff Atwood |
@dave the average number of comments on a Stack Overflow post is .. wait for it.. one. Maybe two. Median is closer to zero. I can't in good conscience live in a world where millions of comments on millions of posts have useless @postowner clutter in them.
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| Aug 6, 2011 at 1:33 | comment | added | Dave DeLong | I find it really ironic that all of these comments are prefixed with "@username". Isn't that proof enough that this change should be revoked? | |
| Jul 9, 2011 at 14:00 | comment | added | Mark Ransom |
@Jeff, Please do an experiment for me. Query the system and find out what percentage of comments in the previous month that were eligible to start with @ actually did so. Now repeat the test again in two months. I predict you'll see a sharp dropoff, which would validate this answer.
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| Jul 9, 2011 at 5:07 | comment | added | Mark Ransom | @Jeff, I'd like to continue this as a chat: chat.meta.stackoverflow.com/rooms/399/… Be kind to me, this is my first exposure to the Chat rooms. | |
| Jul 9, 2011 at 4:56 | comment | added | Jeff Atwood | @mark it isn't inconsistent; talking to the post owner is always "free", talking to other people is the only thing that requires the additional effort of @username. Putting @postowner in the first comment every time works against teaching them the correct thing here. Guess we'll just have to agree to disagree here; not adding tons of extra noise to the world is something I feel extremely strongly about. | |
| Jul 9, 2011 at 4:52 | comment | added | Mark Ransom | @Jeff, which is exactly the wrong thing to learn when they try to respond to someone else's comment a few minutes later. This is the essence of the inconsistency argument I'm trying to make above, and the whole point of the answer to which we're commenting. | |
| Jul 9, 2011 at 4:47 | comment | added | Jeff Atwood | @mark and the example they are learning is, they don't need to do anything special for the post owner to be notified of their comment. | |
| Jul 9, 2011 at 4:03 | comment | added | Mark Ransom | @Jeff, you can't rely on the help link because nobody reads anything. Now where did I learn that? Oh yeah, here: codinghorror.com/blog/2009/10/treating-user-myopia.html Learning by example is much more reliable. | |
| Jul 9, 2011 at 2:17 | comment | added | Jeff Atwood | @Jason indicating that you are talking to the post owner, in the absence of any other people talking, is just as redundant as a "hi fellow coders!" salutation. All comments, by definition, notify the post owner in every possible case. Polluting signal with a bunch of redundant @postowner is the same as polluting signal with a bunch of "hi fellow coders!" Also, if you want to use someone's name without the @ symbol, nobody is preventing you from doing so. | |
| Jul 9, 2011 at 1:22 | comment | added | Jason S | @Jeff: Who cares how the notification system handles this edge case. I don't think any of us who object to the behavior has a strong opinion. We're talking about the written content of a comment. Don't mess with my content! | |
| Jul 8, 2011 at 22:35 | comment | added | Mark Ransom | @Jeff, what I mean is that it's inconsistent depending on whether you're commenting to the post owner or to someone else. It's a UI inconsistency, not a logical inconsistency - I get your point too. | |
| Jul 8, 2011 at 22:21 | comment | added | Jeff Atwood | @mark it is not inconsistent; you never need @postowner to notify the owner of a post about your comment. Period. | |
| Jul 8, 2011 at 22:19 | comment | added | Mark Ransom | @Jeff, it is inconsistent in that sometimes you need it, sometimes you don't and sometimes it's deleted, sometimes it isn't. It doesn't matter that there's a logical explanation, it's still an inconsistency in the interface. | |
| Jul 8, 2011 at 22:11 | comment | added | Jeff Atwood | @mark it isn't inconsistent; the post owner is always notified of every comment on their post, forever, always, in every possible circumstance, no matter what the contents of that comment are. The optional part is notifying someone else which is what @username is about. | |
| Jul 8, 2011 at 21:40 | comment | added | Mark Ransom |
@Jeff, you're applying a technical solution to a social problem. At some point the newbie will need to learn the @ protocol, and by introducing inconsistencies into the system you've made that much harder. As for teaching something incorrect - well it's only incorrect because you declared it so. You could easily change your mind.
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| Jul 8, 2011 at 16:35 | comment | added | Jason S | @Jeff: notification and content are two completely different things. Please don't try to argue that one implies and restricts the other. | |
| Jul 5, 2011 at 7:49 | comment | added | Jeff Atwood | furthermore, what you describe actually "teaches" new users something incorrect -- that is, the post owner is always notified of every comment, and seeing other "experienced" users choose to type @postowner would imply otherwise. | |
| Jul 3, 2011 at 9:38 | comment | added | Jeff Atwood | the help link available under every [Add Comment] button already explains the basics of replies, without littering comments with thousands of noise words. Also FYI, we detect when only two people are talking and notifications will work regardless. Try it... | |
| Jul 3, 2011 at 8:58 | history | answered | Jan Fabry | CC BY-SA 3.0 |