Avoid pinging multiple users in chat

Question

Several chat room users are becoming annoyed by a certain feature of the chat room notification system. When there are two people in a chat room, say John and JohnSmith, and someone pings @John, JohnSmith is also pinged. This is naturally annoying to JohnSmith, especially if someone is having a long discussion with John.

I propose a new feature, where only John would be pinged when someone types @John.

The basic rules for a @ping would be

• If it is a reply to a previous message, ping the user that posted it (as I believe it does now).
• If it is an exact match to one user, ping only that user.
• If it is an exact match to more than one user, ping only those users.
• If there is no exact match, ping all users starting with that name (as it does now).

If possible, it would be nice an if exact match would include case-sensitivity, but I don't think it matters much if that isn't possible.

• Kendall Frey: A similar question has been asked before. However, it seems that we still have a problem. I would like if anyone who has experienced this issue could share more details. I don't know the exact details, since I haven't seen another Kendall in chat.
• Kyle Trauberman: See: meta.scifi.stackexchange.com/questions/938/…
• Kendall Frey: @KyleTrauberman: Thanks for the link. I think that means this question only applies to cases where both people have the same first name, as in John and JohnSmith.
• user102937: Ah, yes. The "Rob" and "Michael" problem. (@RobertHarvey @RobertCartaino, @MichaelMyers @MichaelMrozek).
• Jeff Atwood: it does seem that if there's an exact match, the ping should be just to the exact match.
• Kendall Frey: @JeffAtwood: I'm not sure exactly what happens. It could be that the ping sound doesn't play, but I know there is a notification of some sort to JohnSmith.
• Hans Rudel: @KendallFrey: Cant upvote this question as i dont have 15 rep but thanks for posting this + hopefully a solution is found.

Answer 1

This is already partially implemented.

If the ping phrase is an exact match to the full name or one of the words in the name, a ping won't be issued (A ping highlight next to the name however will will)

So for example, if we have Mad Scientist and Madara Uchiha in the same room, when someone pings @Mad, only Mad Scientist will be pinged.

Still, when a full match is found on both users (either by name or by word), both will be pinged.

Answer 2

This seems to have been fixed.

Some of us did a bit of experimenting.

I first changed my username to Madishearth. In the room, at the time, were two more users, Madara Uchicha and Mad Scientist

While @Mad got pink highlighting for all three users, it only pinged Mad Scientist, regardless of who had last posted.

Then, I changed my username to Madashearth. The @Mad ping worked the same way. A @Mada ping pinged both me and Madara Uchicha, and gave both of us purple highlighting.

Then, I changed my username to Madara Uchiha2. @MadaraUchiha pinged the "real" Madara only, and not me. I still saw the purple highlighting.

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• If it is a reply to a previous message, ping the user that posted it (as I believe it does now).

Check. Always worked.

• If it is an exact match to one user, ping only that user.

Check. See @MadaraUchiha

If it is an exact match to more than one user, ping only those users.

Not sure, but combining the results from @Mada and @Madara, I'd say that this works :)

If there is no exact match, ping all users starting with that name (as it does now).

Check. Always worked.

The only difference is that if there is a word match (Mad Scientist vs MadScientist for @Mad), it only pings the user, who has a first "name" matching with the ping text. To me, that's a feature, not a bug :)

• Lix: I just got a flashback from the time of @tim...
• Shog9: We're all mad here...