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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
@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>
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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.
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.
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.
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'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.
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.
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.
@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...