Wrong inbox notification for chat messages

Question

I've encountered the problem, that I'm getting all the chat notifications of other users with the same but different name in my top bar inbox.

Recently a moderator super pinged a user using his user ID. I am an active chat user in the room the ping occurred in and I have the same name as the user that was pinged.

I also received a notification in my inbox:

enter image description here

You can find the chat message here.

The chat message and the history of that message state that @sven was the target of the notification, which is why I assume I got a notification, however since the moderator super pinged the user using his user ID I do not believe that I should have received a notification.

Let me know if you need further information to locate the bug.

• user152859: That's not a bug, display names are not unique and are not case sensitive. Feel free to start feature request asking to make it case sensitive, though I doubt it will be done.
• user152859: Just change your display name to be unique and you won't get others' notifications anymore. :)
• fuxia: @ShadowWizard I have used super ping: @@userid, not the name.
• user152859: @toscho but it was translated to @Sven maybe that's the bug?
• fuxia: The other user has the name sven. Lower case s.
• user152859: @toscho case is not relevant, it's not case sensitive.
• Flyk: @toscho the chat history for that message says @sven and not the userid you pinged. I suspect that will still ping all users named sven afaik
• fuxia: @Flyk The history doesn’t reveal the use of a superping. The user ID is always replaced by the user’s display name for superpings.
• Flyk: @toscho yeah that's what I'm seeing in the history - I suspect that is what caused the other sven to get pinged, rather than case sensitivity.
• user152859: Reverted my downvote now, as it appears to be some kind of a bug with super pinging.

Answer 1

Update:

This will need the attention of Stack Exchange in order to resolve as it is unexpected behaviour with super pinging when notifying users in the instance that other users who active use chat have the same name.

Original post:

Names on Stack Exchange chat are neither unique or case sensitive. In this instance, there were multiple people named "sven" and they were both pinged. This will happen in any instance where there are multiple people with the same name or only a partial name is used to ping a user and that partial name matches multiple users.

For example; if you're in a channel with multiple people named "Tim" (ie: Tim Post and Tim Stone) and ping @Tim, both users will receive a notification.

• user152859: You sure both get notified? Any official post about it, because in comments only one is notified. :/
• Flyk: @ShadowWizard I did say "Stack Exchange chat" and yes, absolutely certain
• user152859: OK, taking your word on this. :)
• Flyk: I have had a lot of practice pinging all the @Rory in the DMZ, so they started renaming :P
• user152859: Lol... I once saw there are thousands of Dan's on Stack Overflow wonder how many of them ever used the chat
• yannis: Hm, yes, but apparently toscho used the (mod only) superping. The superping relies on the user id, and that one is unique. This still feels like a bug to me.
• Flyk: Could be that after hitting enter, chat fetches the user name and uses that for the message. Check the message history for that chat message - does it say @sven or @@userid? If it says @sven then this will still cause a ping to all users named sven
• yannis: The superping is a bit more complex @Flyk. It can reach people who have never entered the room, or don't even have a chat account. So, although the name does replace the user id, the user id isn't discarded completely once the name is there. What you describe might be the case, but it really shouldn't be.
• Flyk: @Yannis I'm not arguing it should - however, this question in its current form does not state this issue, it talks about case sensitivity only
• Sven: Thank you for all the help. I updated my question to clarify the issue.
• user152859: @Yannis so all sven's in the network got notified? That would be... not so good.
• Mohammad: So what should we do about the problem?
• Flyk: @user689 wait until Stack Exchange acknowledge and fix the issue
• user152859: @Flyk which can take 6-8 years, or eternity.