When I try to start a comment with @ and then someone's name, the whole string -- the symbol plus the name -- is being deleted. Is that a bug, or am I doing something wrong?
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1meta.stackexchange.com might get you an answer faster (since that is a question about how the Q&A site engine works)– MatthewMartinJun 30, 2014 at 2:53
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Testing: If you look at this comment, @Tommy, you’ll see that your name is not automatically removed.– TRiGJun 30, 2014 at 15:24
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@TriG, it only happens if the @ plus name is at the start. If you are not seeing your own name preceded by the @ sign in this comment, then you're seeing the problem.– tkpJun 30, 2014 at 15:58
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Darn -- it worked that time! Sigh. I'll ask on meta.SE as MatthewMartin suggested.– tkpJun 30, 2014 at 15:58
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@Tommy. Of course it worked that time, because I didn't write the post to which these comments are attached. You did. Which is why your name will probably be stripped from the beginning of this comment. This is all explained in my answer below.– TRiGJun 30, 2014 at 16:00
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@TriG notice my name was not stripped, and nor was yours from the one below (despite the fact that in that case you were the post author)– tkpJun 30, 2014 at 16:02
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Yeah. At this point I'm confused too. I know there's an existing discussion of this on Meta SE, but I can't find it.– TRiGJun 30, 2014 at 16:03
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1I just had a look, and there are umpteen related discussions. No way I'm venturing in there -- I'd get my newbie head ripped off :-) I think I'll just follow your approach and work the name into the middle of the comment.– tkpJun 30, 2014 at 16:07
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1 Answer
When you comment, the owner of the post (question or answer) on which you are commenting is automatically notified. Therefore, mentioning their name is redundant. It doesn’t do any harm, but it isn’t necessary either.
Someone thought it would be a good idea to automatically remove such redundant names. I don’t know who thought this or why: it’s one of many incomprehensible decisions taken by the SO overlords, and is certainly more confusing than helpful. However, that’s the way it is.
I think they’re removed only when they occur at the very beginning of a comment. If you work them into a sentence, as I often do, they remain in place.
They also remain in place when the person has made comments themselves.
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One problem that sometimes arises is that the comment text doesn't change if the user changes their username. So removing the hard link in favor of the existing soft link is actually more permanent. Jun 30, 2014 at 15:59
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@TriG Hmm, so now I'm in debug mode. As you can see in my above test to you, I failed to reproduce the problem. I wonder if it's because I immediately followed your name with a comma. In this comment, I've left out that comma. So, lets see if this comment begins with your @ name.– tkpJun 30, 2014 at 16:00
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