Site-wide mentions for @all and @group

[Sadr]

Sometimes while writing a post, I realize this is something a lot of people on the site should be aware of. Either everyone subscribed to the group in posting in, or to everyone on the site. Yet, I never use the site-wide private message, firstly because that's a secondary action I usually can't be bothered to do, and secondly because I don't always want everyone's attention, but rather only those interested in the topic at hand.

What if you set aside some usernames like @all and @group for simple site-wide mention notifications? @all would be everyone on the site. @group would be everyone in the group you are posting in. Possibly there could also be a way of addressing specific groups, e.g. "Everyone in this @group and @troubleshooting please take notice..." though that could in rare cases cause conflicts with usernames.

Just a thought. Might be plugin territory I guess.

[boonebgorges]

I think it's a neat idea, though I think that it's probably (as you say) plugin territory. At the very least, I would like to see a solid plugin implementation before considering it for BP core. But I am willing to entertain other thoughts about it.

[r-a-y]

This was an idea I had floating in my head for groups; it would be similar to how identi.ca does group mentions (using group slug as the identifier and "!" as the carat).

There are some technical problems though like mentioning a group from your profile and showing that activity item in the main group activity stream. There could be a group mentions tab that would alleviate the problem to an extent. Just thinking out loud!

[webraket]

@all is asking for trouble.
Please think about email-notifications and spambots...

[r-a-y]

The group mentions idea is better suited as a plugin (at least for now).

Luckily, etivite has created a plugin for this:
​https://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/buddypress-activity-stream-atgroups/

I agree that @all would be a bad idea in general.

[sooskriszta]

@boonebgorges Now that there is a solid plugin, what are your thoughts about including this in core?

If @username mentions are in core, it does make sense to include @groupname mentions in core too.

I agree that slug could be used as groupname/grouphandle. Not sure about using ! as mention interrupt. I would favor continuing to use @ for groups too.

If there is a concern that there might be a conflict between username and groupname, perhaps the string "group" can be prefixed to the slug to create the group mention handle i.e. @groupgroupname

Also see #5010

[boonebgorges]

The fact that there's a solid plugin for group mentions suggests to me that we *don't* need it for core, rather than that we *should* include it. The questions we should ask in these sorts of cases: (a) will at least 75% of installations make use of the feature? and (b) is this a feature that won't work as a plugin (such as taxonomy-based xprofile fields, which really needs core support to work)? If the answer to both questions is "no", it's not a good candidate for core. In this current case, the answer to (b) is definitely "no". And I'm not convinced that the majority of installations would use it, though if we were to get a flood of responses in this thread to the contrary, I'm willing to be proved wrong.

As for name conflicts: yes, I am concerned about it. I personally like the ! convention better than using @groupgroupname. If I were writing this into a plugin, another possibility is to use @ for groups and users, and to enforce that group and user nicenames can't conflict.

I'll leave the ticket in case anyone else wants to jump in with an opinion. Otherwise I think we'll go back to wontfix, as this just doesn't seem like the best use of our limited core development resources.