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Possible Duplicate:
Eeeeek - what happened to my @ salutation?

Whenever I try to start a comment (either new comment or editing existing) with:

@Robert: blah blah blah

and then save my comment all it ends up is:

blah blah blah

User reference is just simply gone... Has anything been changed that I'm not aware of?

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  • Goodness, yes... This has changed recently (documented here) and then people have come out of the woodwork opposing it. Sort questions by most-recent to see that ~50% of the recent posts on Meta concern this behavior.
    – Cody Gray
    Jul 22 '11 at 12:12
  • It seems to be a duplicate, yes. Thanks guys. You can vote to close.
    – Robert Koritnik
    Jul 22 '11 at 12:18
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Yes, there has been a change. When you reply to the post owner, the @xyz is automatically stripped. Many users have strongly objected to this change, but at the moment it looks like it's here to stay.

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    Definitely here to stay. This is really the only proposal that has a hope, in part because it doesn't adversely affect the signal-to-noise ratio on the site as a whole, and in part because it's constructively presented.
    – Cody Gray
    Jul 22 '11 at 12:13
  • Ok thanks. I wasn't aware of this change. And it seems unreasonable since comments have double-faceted functionality which is confusing.
    – Robert Koritnik
    Jul 22 '11 at 12:14
  • @Robert: The idea is that they don't have two purposes. Using @ to notify the post owner is superfluous, since the post owner will always be notified of any comments to their posts. This is documented in the help text you see when typing a comment--click the "help" link to the next of the comment entry box for details. (Or read any of Jeff Atwood's numerous posts explaining the behavior.)
    – Cody Gray
    Jul 22 '11 at 12:17
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    @Cody: User referencing isn't just for notifications but also a lot for human readability. And this fact has been overlooked here. It's not all in computers but in the eyes of the beholder.
    – Robert Koritnik
    Jul 22 '11 at 12:20

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