Writing a message directed @user by pinging

Question

There seems to be a a Q2A plugin that enables pinging @user similarly as it works on SE

http://sourceforge.net/projects/scorchqaplugins/files/latest/download

But when testing it some time ago, it there was a bug

http://www.question2answer.org/qa/28885/bug-when-trying-to-use-the-plugin-to-ping-somebody-with-%40user

but maybe we can get it running properly now?

Comments

It seems that you have just enabled it, but it doesn't work, isn't it? I saw the same error you mentioned in the post above. 

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I think, that by design, if you have commented on a post, then all new comments on that post will notify you, so there is no need for this plug-in.           

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Yes I am getting notified about new answers to my questions and replies to my comments per email. But these notifications I only see when I open my mail box. So it would be nice to get such notifications directly on the site in a future time.

Answer 1

We have our own PhysicsOverflow @user pinging plugin! I have written and installed a plugin that parses all new posts and detects @user directives. Additionally I have adapted the History plugin to detect these events similar as other events. Every time you log in, you get a yellow bubble near your username at the top of the page. To see the events, you click on your username there and then on the Hstory tab.

If you write @PeterBlackhole for complete names (can contain more than two words), both, the user 'PeterBlackhole' and the user 'Peter Blackhole' are searched in the user database. Please omit unicode characters, just A..Z, a..z and 0..9 are allowed. In case of doubt, search for the user to be pinged here and use the characters as registered in the database.

@dimension10 Could you please add this feature to the FAQ page?

Comments

Wow, thank you! This is even better than StackExchange's. I will add it to the FAQ immediately. This is so great I started hallucinating bells going around in my head when I saw the new update "@user ping" in my history! 

Answer 2

Yes, I think this plugin should be installed now, that email notifications have been shut down by default.  

Answer 3

There are still the same error messages with this plugin. Its last update was in 2011.

I give me some days to write our own plugin. It would really be important to have such a feature! In principle, I know how to do, creating events for the event log if a user is pinged and let these evaluate by a small change in the history plugin. The user would then get the well known yellow dot at his username, when he logs in.

However, there is an issue that I do not yet know how to solve. Let us assume that we have two user, "Peter" and "Peter Blackhole". In a post there could be pings like

@Peter Can you explain ...
@Peter Blackhole As you explained ...

It would be very difficult to distinguish between the two pings. Could you eventually live with the directive to put a colon after the full name? Examples:

@Peter: Can you explain ...
@Peter Blackhole: As you explained ...

Comments

At SE to ping Peter Blackhole one would have to write @PeterBlackhole without white space between first and last name. Maybe this could be used here too?

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Yes, it would be nice if Dilaton's suggestion would work. It is ok if it pings both, say  PeterBlackhole and  Peter Blackhole when one writes @PeterBlackhole