chat! :)

The overriding concern for me is that a) most posts have only a few comments and b) those comments are always easier to read if they are not peppered by @postowner over and over

I'm trying to make two arguments here: 1. the existence of two different rules for informing someone of updated comments has led to an inconsistency in the UI for comments. 2. The use of the @ tag should not be considered "noise" so much as "redundant signal" which can be tolerated.

it's also obvious who is talking to who, when you have only a single comment on a post

I don't entirely buy this "But I am talking to <dramatic pause> the world </dramatic pause> not the post owner!"

news flash: every comment IS talking to the post owner. You're delusional if you think otherwise. You can ALSO address the world, but you can't snub the post owner by "ignoring" them.

Yes, that's true. I guess I'm more concerned about the opposite situation, where a comment thread starts out just between two people but expands into a more active thread.

I think that is the outlier

I can run stats if you like, but I will warn you: they won't be in your favor

we have a HUUUGE corpus of content

Every comment should be germane to the question or answer that it's connected to, but often it's a response to a specific point made by someone else. That's been my experience at least.

very very few things get many comments

it's also worth RE-mentioning that this @postowner removal only happens when nobody else is involved in the comments

the minute a third person enters, we don't do it any more

data.stackexchange.com/stackoverflow/q/105113

The answer that we were commenting on had a very specific point to make: teaching newbies how to comment in the general case becomes impossible when the system strips the relevant example in the specific case.

so we're teaching them that they must ALWAYS use @username? That's incorrect.

the thing they need to be taught is, "look, you don't EVER have to type @postowner . You only need to type @username to notify an additional person."

not only is it incorrect, it adds noise to every single comment

It's only incorrect because you've decided it is. I don't think you've realized that yet. Personally I don't like wasting the brain cells to determine if a particular comment requires the @ or not.

Again, it all depends on your definition of "noise". I don't know if you've seen my own answer in that thread, but I have an argument there as well.

the average number of comments per post is two.

by your rationale, that means 2 * 2 million posts would have the useless @postowner in them.

I object to this.

now, if people want to type "Mark, I believe that.." I have no problem with that

it's the uselessness of "@mark I believe that" which I object to. e.g. the "I must do this, so that this person gets notified of my comment."

In case my opinion matters at all here, I agree with the Supreme Overlord guy...

nothing we are doing is stopping people from typing "Mark" or "Chacha" or whatever like in a normal sentence.

I happen to think that consistency in UI is worth something too.

well, we also remove salutations from posts. Anything at the beginning of a post which is not content is inordinately harmful.

assuming you are a left-to-right culture

note that I haven't really supported removing "thanks" and so forth from posts because that stuff is at the bottom

I think that having too many @ symbols in comments just makes it harder to read and dilutes the significance of the symbol.

first impressions matter, and you have to read from top to bottom and left to right

when the first thing you start with isn't content, that hurts

@Chacha102 @now @why @would @you @say @that?

And actually I'm quite surprised at your statement that leaving off the @ is a valid workaround. A single character is worth this much drama? I would have expected that if that convention became popular, it would be the next "feature" to be implemented.

@JeffAtwood It is like if you use a exclamation point after every sentence! The meaning is diluted eventually! and you just learn to ignore it!

What I'm saying is, the metadata around "who gets notified" should not be intertwingled with someone's express desire to use another person's name

@MarkRansom That is the difference of using a feature of the system (mentions) and using regular language..

Read my other answer in the thread. I make the argument that having "@person" is actually very easy for someone to learn to ignore.

1) post owner is ALWAYS notified. Always, always, always, always.

@MarkRansom Which is exactly why using it very infrequently is important...

2) If you like using someone's name for whatever reason, go for it. Just don't intertwingle that with the redundant desire to notify someone who by definition is always going to be notified of every.. single.. comment.. on their post.

Jeff, the fact that a post owner is always notified is a very subtle point from a usability viewpoint. Consistency is worth much more.

trying to build a "median # of comments on a question" query, but I think the answer is ZERO

Yes, don't knock yourself out - I know we're talking about a corner case here.

@MarkRansom it is not subtle, if you see comments that contain no @postowner yet the post owners seem to always know about them. However, if those comments contain @postowner the issue is forever and permanently muddled.

"gee, do I need to use @postowner? Looks like everyone else does, so..." <cue millions of noise comment words added to every page>

Can we at least agree that there's a UI inconsistency? I don't think I was quite able to make that point in the comment thread.

what UI? We're talking about typing into a textbox.

speaking of UI, the "help" button does explain this rather clearly.

Did you see my comment about the help button? I thought it was rather appropriate.

seems rather irrelevant, since the UI in question is that of the command line -- typing into a box.

Anything that requires an action from the user is part of the UI, whether it's hitting a button or typing something.

yes, the median # of comments on a question on Stack Overflow is zero.

data.stackexchange.com/stackoverflow/s/1579/…

Comments use mini-Markdown formatting: [link](http://example.com) _italic_ **bold** `code`. The post author will always be notified of your comment. To notify a previous commenter, mention their user name: @peter or @PeterSmith will both work. Learn more…

Learn more... links to stackoverflow.com/editing-help#comment-formatting

I'm not arguing that your help text isn't clear, I'm arguing that nobody sees it. Not your fault of course, just part of human nature.

what users will see, by your rationale, is millions of redundant @postowner entries in comments. From which they will learn, incorrectly, that "gee, I better enter @postowner everywhere, or the post owner might not see this!"

worst of all, every person who loads the page has to read that noise at the start of each comment, too.

Again it's germane to the post we were commenting on. The point being that it would be good to teach by example, but this new feature removes the example.

resulting damage to civilization: incalculable! But seriously, it's the same, the EXACT SAME, reason we remove salutations from posts.

there is undue harm from needless words at the start of content

> Omit Needless Words!!!

and for those who want to use people's names -- nothing is stopping them from typing "Mark, I believe that.."

No, they don't have to read the noise, they will learn to skip over it if it's redundant. I think you're exaggerating the harm from this convention, and underestimating the harm from having an inconsistent convention.

@mark it is not inconsistent; the post owner is ALWAYS notified of every comment -- no matter what that comment does or does not contain.

And the difference from "@Mark, I believe that..." is what?

right, if I began EVERY SINGLE THING I typed (scroll up) with @mark , then I'd agree with you.

I see I'm still not making my point about the inconsistency. Sometimes you need to use the @person convention, and sometimes you don't. It shouldn't be necessary to think about this.

there's also no concept of post owner in a chat room

@MarkRansom it isn't necessary to think about it; just type, and for the average # of comments on a Stack Overflow post -- TWO -- everything will just work

remember, we also infer replies when responding to the post owner, since.. well.. who else would that person be talking to in their comment?

Jeff, you've already established that the median number of comments is zero, so we're already not talking about the most common case - we're talking about a corner case.

ok, so statistically speaking, there aren't comments. But even when there are, they are (typically) 2-3 at most. And you simply do NOT need @postowner in that situation.

We're in agreement there. 2-3 comments don't need any extra decoration. Where we disagree is in the harm that adding the extra decoration causes.

This is a topic I feel extremely strongly about, since I am very protective of signal to noise ratio on our sites, even if it occasionally harms discussion.

discussion works against content in so many cases, for all the reasons outlined here: scobleizer.com/2009/11/02/…

> At first [more discussion and conversation] looks like a positive thing, right? Over on FriendFeed people are telling me “we have more conversations.” That’s true, but the more conversations I got involved in the less I found I was learning.

I hope you don't mind if I save the link to read later.

we regularly throw discussion under the bus to protect the core mission, which is learning

and again: same reason, exact same reason, we strip salutations from posts. Extraneous, redundant content at the beginning causes inordinate harm.

I've found that the longer I've been on StackOverflow, the more I participate in comments and the less I participate in answers. I still believe that I'm adding value to the site though, I'd hate to learn that I'm wrong about that.

I find that long comment threads are almost always symptomatic of problems

I got drawn into one on parenting, and realized that I was screwing up: I needed to formulate a proper answer to the question, with citations not just bicker in comments.

I'd be interesting in learning more about the "inordinate harm" that you feel so strongly about.

well, it's partially a broken windows thing. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Broken_windows_theory

tons of people see @postowner used in every..single..comment .. pretty soon the world is full of redundant usage of @postowner

> Or consider a sidewalk. Some litter accumulates. Soon, more litter accumulates. Eventually, people even start leaving bags of trash from take-out restaurants there or breaking into cars.

litter accumulating example: I've seen, many times, people do "hey @postowner, did you see what @otheruser said?"

of course that does not work, since the match (used to) stop at @postowner and you can only notify one person per comment

therefore, teaching people that they DON'T need to use @postowner , ever, frees them to use it for what it was intended for: notifying someone else

I still feel that the redundant @postowner is a very minor thing, as long as it's always at the beginning of the comment. Easily ignored, cognitively speaking.

I have to tell you that I have extremely strong feelings in this matter. There are other things I can certainly be swayed on. This is not one of those things.

I'm simply right about this.

I've provided tons of citations, links, and specific examples of the harm unchecked @postowner does

all of which I have personally observed

I also said that we explicitly DO NOT do this, once the third person enters the chat

which I think is a perfectly fair compromise

I'm happy to discuss this as long as you like, but the odds of me changing my mind on this issue are pretty much nil.

I keep coming back to the concrete example in the answer - there are cases where the @person is required, and you are unable to teach that to a newbie because the system strips it off until there's a third person on the thread.

Hoenstly, it just looks better when not every comment is started with @postowner... that has to count for something...

@mark that's what the help link is for, and they can CERTAINLY observe it being used to talk to people who are not the post owner.

I don't think it's unreasonable to assume that "hey, the person whose thing I am commented on will always get notified of my comment."

@Chacha10, yes of course it counts for something - but does it count more than consistency in the UI? That's the debate I'm trying to have.

because, after all, you get notified of answers on your questions, do you not? And what is a comment, but a mini "answer" to an answer?

there is no inconsistency in the UI, for the millionth time. The post owner always gets notified, period.

Sometimes a comment is a comment to the answer, sometimes it's a comment to another comment. As long as they're both germane to the post they're attached to, they should be tolerated.

I feel like we're going in circles here

@MarkRansom And I think the answer is no. It doesn't count more. It makes more sense for it to not be there, it looks better, and doesn't require anyone to have to learn to skip over it...

Why should the user have to 'tolerate' anything?

for the sake of consistency...

@mark but the situation you describe ALWAYS requires a third person to enter the comments, which means the @postowner removal is no longer used.

Yes, we may have reached the end of the usefulness of this chat. Thank you for spending some time here, I've appreciated the opportunity.

well, it was a good excercise of chat.. we have an excellent chat system!

and of course others can find it and read about how crazy I am on this topic :)

(the chats are all public, etc)

so it's a useful artifact to have, in case others want more detail on why I feel so strongly about this

Just for giggles, my first exposure to a chat system was about 35 years ago...

@JeffAtwood I think most people know you are crazy without needing to read the chat...

@MarkRansom well, try out chat.so -- or chat.se -- some very nice users hang out there

(Go to the Tavern!)

(It is awesome!)

there are lots of site-specific rooms as well

(chat.meta.stackoverflow.com/rooms/89/tavern-on-the-meta)

ah, meta chat :p

Nah, I burned out on chat about 34 years ago... but for this specific purpose it was useful.

(Its like the swirly vortex of beer that sucks all your time away :P)!

@MarkRansom it is definitely better than a zillion comments.. appreciate you taking the time

@Jeff I'm sure your time is more precious than mine - thank you!

waves

@Chacha10, thanks for joining in.

@MarkRansom It's what I do :)