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.

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 )

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.

---

• 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 :)