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When you change your display name it would be nice if it was changed in any comments mentioning you.

For instance, if someone replied to you in a comment:

@Trufa This is a comment reply

The @Trufa should be changed to @new_name

I'm aware of some of the complications of what that might bring!

I think that it only considers the first word so, in more that one-word-names:

@Trufa XXX This is a comment reply

The change would apply wrongly (in a change like Trufa XXX => new_name):

@new_name XXX This is a comment reply

I have no idea programmatically how complex this is (or impossible by design), so I just wanted to put it out there.

I think the proposal (isolated from fact of how complex it would be) is "good in spirit", it's up to you to decide if it is a good idea.

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The problem is, this is a valid comment reply to you:

@tru Hello!

The system knows to alert you, but when you change your name, what should happen?

@new_name Hello!
@new Hello!

Or let's say you change your name to A BC D. What should it change to?

@A BCD Hello! Note this is not a valid comment reply
@ABC D Hello! This valid form only joins letters together if necessary
@ABCD Hello! This form joins all letters

Because of the flexibility of comment replies, it's rather difficult to establish a way to do this.

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    Yep, agreed! I see that, its a pitty though, I think combined with a reply button, it would be a very useful feature
    – Trufa
    Dec 6, 2010 at 23:40
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    It could be restricted to only work on successful comment replies. These are actually stored with your account, and do not base themselves on your display name. After all, you keep all of your envelope activity reports even after a display name change. It will mess up situations where people actually did notify the wrong Jon, but it removes a lot of the error of determining who was spoken to.
    – Grace Note StaffMod
    Dec 6, 2010 at 23:40
  • @Trufa Yes, I agree it would be very useful, but it would require the SE team to do a lot of work, and considering that Jeff has said that "comments are a second-class citizen", I would consider it unlikely...
    – waiwai933
    Dec 7, 2010 at 0:02
  • @ waiwai933 True! I makes sense that they are not a priority though!
    – Trufa
    Dec 7, 2010 at 0:05

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