@-mentions on Karrot

[bruno]

How many times have you thought about tagging someone on any Karrot conversation, like this @nicksellen @danveg @karolina @dave_goodman_jr @Michal_Lewandowski @Katie_Berns ?

• Multiple times
• At least once
• Never thought about it
• What are you talking about?

Comment if you think it would be useful and in which situation.

[danveg]

Thanks for creating this thread! I think it would be useful to tag people that are responsible for something for instance, both in wall posts and in place descriptions. Others can then directly contact the correct person, especially if there are more people with the same or similar name.

[kristijan]

what would the tagging ensure ? It seems to a feature to make a person aware of a text

• how would you want to do it ?

[bruno]

@kristijan

It seems to a feature to make a person aware of a text

yes

@kristijan

how would you want to do it ?

How it would be implemented? The basic assumption is that it’d work like most of the other communication platforms with this feature, that is, when a person is mentioned they receive a notification or get some kind of highlight in the notification.

[Michal_Lewandowski]

Good Idea! this will inform peoples outside conversation that it may be ralated to them!

[Vasilis_Ntouros]

I think that additionally to @ for tagging a person, using hashtags as well might be a nice way for organising/filtering some information that might be posted on the wall. And I think that with hashtags karrot group members can create their own categories and systems/libraries of information.

Sorry for putting this here but I thought it is somehow connected with the @ feature.

[nicksellen]

I thought a bit more about this, and wrote some thoughts over on the GitHub issue → Add @mentions · Issue #2407 · yunity/karrot-frontend · GitHub

[nicksellen]

New Years present! I started working on @-mentions…

[bruno]

Yaaay! Looks good and ill be very useful!

[nicksellen]

Need to decide what to actually do when someone gets mentioned now

Here’s a few thoughts on how I imagine it should/could work:

• if the user is not already in the conversation they get a notification that they have been mentioned and a link to it
  • which kind of notification? email? push? bell?
  • we don’t have links to individual messages implemented right now…
• if the user is already in that conversation and will have been sent a notification anyway, don’t need to send them another one
  • they won’t be told they have specifically been mentioned though, is that ok?
• don’t automatically subscribe the mentioned user to conversations
  • slack has this option when mentioning a user not in a channel to drag them in, but I’m not sure it’s a good idea for us…
• perhaps needs a new notification-level for conversations (“only mentions”)
  • … will probably trigger thoughts on improving the whole notification settings … would like to avoid that right now
• I wonder if we’ll come across cases where you can mention a user, but they don’t have access to the conversation, what then?
  • well, not send them a notification
  • … but also might be nice to make that clear in the UI so there is no expectation of response
  • …or even not be able to mention users that don’t have permission… but that’s probably not needed
• only allow mentions in messages
  • … and not other markdown text, e.g. group description
  • … technically we could allow them in other places though, and just not have any associated notifications …

I hope it might be possible to implement a more minimal version of some of this first then refine it with feedback.

(And especially do not want to have to implement as much stuff as slack have, see their flowchart for a sense of the complexity).

[bruno]

Yes, now the complicated bit
Here’s my opinion…

@nicksellen

which kind of notification? email? push?

Same ones you get for direct message conversation, e-mail and push I guess. And chat bubbles ofc

@nicksellen

they won’t be told they have specifically been mentioned though, is that ok?

Maybe a little green highlighted @ at the notification could be useful?

@nicksellen

I wonder if we’ll come across cases where you can mention a user, but they don’t have access to the conversation, what then?

Like someone mentioning a third party who’s not part of a direct message between two people? This is a case in which the best option would be not to allow mentions at all, but I can’t think of anything else. No notification can also be good enough.

@nicksellen

only allow mentions in messages

• … and not other markdown text, e.g. group description

Well, that can be actually quite useful! In my group we always have one person or more responsible for a specific place, so we usually need to use markdown linking to a person’s profile at the place description. Sometimes we reference a person on the activity description as well. The usefulness is people will more easily be able to create a link to a user’s profile, but it makes sense getting a notification for that as well if you’re not the one doing it yourself.

@nicksellen

(And especially do not want to have to implement as much stuff as slack have, see their flowchart for a sense of the complexity).

Oh holy cow, I agree!

Happy to see more feedback from other’s experiences!

[nicksellen]

Ok nearly there! I’m thinking to merge it soon, then ask if people can try it out on dev.karrot.world for a bit… (could get a beta-tester group going maybe…).

Here’s how it works:

• it now requires having a username
  • these will be automatically generated for existing users
    • hopefully in a nice way, using first name only if possible (e.g. “Nick Sellen” → @nick)
    • gives priority for people who used the site most recently
  • cannot change username (could add this in future)
  • cannot use username to login, only email address (could add this in future)
• you can @-mention people in a few places:
  • any message/wall
  • group/place/activity descriptions
• notifications are only for messages (not any of the descriptions)
  • no notifications for private conversations or people not in the group
  • will still notify inactive users (as maybe can pull them back in…)
  • you get a bell notification (see screenshot below)
  • you get an email notification (see screenshot below)
    • if you are already in the conversation, it will mark that you were notified, so you won’t get a duplicate message notification later

Email notification when mentioned

Bell notification when mentioned

Signup with username field

[nicksellen]

I merged my work on @-mentions today!

You can try it out at https://dev.karrot.world/ (separate account details to karrot.world, so sign up if you haven’t already).

Would be useful if some people would try it out…

[nicksellen]

This is deployed and live at https://karrot.world now

… this feature added usernames to karrot, but no ability to change them, that’s maybe a next step on this feature …