Link to members with @ / cat-fancy orgy

You can now link to members using the @ grammar used elsewhere (eg., Twitter, Facebook, YouTube).

So, for example, when you type @jbd1 or @conceptDawg, your words turn into links to that member. If you use it with a non-member, like @jbmiorty it doesn't turn into a link.

Soon, they'll be a way to see what posts you're mentioned in.

This is going to cause some consternation, and some glee. It's been discussed before, but we decided to push it for now. What do people think of it?See also poll in #5.

Just testing: @timspalding

I think it's a good idea simply because it is the same function as clicking on their name in a post title bar. I would imagine that most people mentioned in a thread would have posted to that thread.

Personally I'm going to get confused with people here that I also know on Twitter like @Felius and @JohnDalton! Wait, there is a @JohnDalton. (Love the new preview button as well.)

I think it's a good idea, but I've always found it a crummy way to have to read it. It just breaks up the flow for me. But I guess if I was a twitter fanatic it might be second nature to me instead of looking ugly.

Why not just allow the @ to be something that's only used in the body of the post just like [ and ] are used in the body of the message, but not in the rendered version? To me, it seems like seeing @timspalding is like seeing [Lord of the Rings]. It's just making things look more techno-ish that don't need to.

I voted yes. I think it does break up the flow somewhat. This is inevitable on Twitter. I think we can do better.

Yes, that's a much better idea.

A slight problem I've just come across is that many people use the @ to designate a 'style' of tags. Some of these come up as member names. eg @Read

At first I was worried that using this new feature was actually creating the profile, but the join date indicates otherwise.

Man, we're turning into Quakers. Consensus it is!

Done.

6> Yeah, I'm going to have to be careful about using that...I use it on quite a few tags, don't know if any of them are member names (@Discard, @Borrowed, @Read from (that one will)...). Heh, funny - all of them. And all from 2006 or 2007...

So now I need to learn the HTML code for @. Let's see... ah, it's @ - & # 64 ;
If I type @Discard ...how does that look? Yep, that works.

Why do you need the code?

10> See my message answering you in the Welcome to LibraryThing! thread...if I'm mentioning my tags (as I do, particularly to newcomers), I need to know how to show my @-tags without turning them into links.

I see.

>9 jjmcgaffey: I see your second Discard linking to a profile, not displaying as a tag with an @.

Is it the old HTML not preserved problem again?

@jjmcgaffey: & is &, by the way.

@Noisy - yes it is. I'll post on the appropriate bug thread.

13> Thanks. Yeah, I guess that hasn't been exempted...

>9 jjmcgaffey:. From what I gather this is just for talk posts, not for tags.... Right?

#17 yeah. But if you want to mention tags in a talk post, and the tag in quetion contains @ (such as my @ 2011 reading date tags) then you'll need to code for it.

>18 reading_fox:. OK I get it now. :-D

There really needs to be a simple way to display special symbols. Something like plaintext and /plaintext inside angle brackets.

What is "@ grammar"? I don't use Twitter or any of those other things.

>21 lilithcat:

What is "@ grammar"?

If you put the "at" symbol before (and attached to) a person's name you create a link.

This is pretty awesome. Big fan.

I'll look at adding some sort of plaintext feature. My thought would be to use "escape" characters, like @ and \[

20/24> Yeah, a plaintext marker has long been a big want for me. But I understand I'm probably in the minority. For me, it's to escape things like javascript and html for talk posts. As such, any plain character as the start/end of the escape will likely be more trouble than it's worth when they wind up in the text of what I'm posting. ETA: And backslashes - yeah, you can see why that will actually make pasting html/javascript even WORSE!

One possibility on the @ front is to use two @s for the profile linking.

And on a completely different thought - how about # (or maybe better as ## for the same reasons) for dropping in links to other message numbers in the thread? :D

How about if we just allow the PRE code?

27> Well, it depends on what you mean. If you just mean allowing it and not handling it specially, that's not going to help. HTML inside a PRE is still parsed/interpreted/rendered.

27 and 28> Do you mean the CODE tag?

Soon, they'll be a way to see what posts you're mentioned in.

For me to see that myself, or for anyone to see what posts I'm mentioned in?

I guess I can see some value in the first. The second sounds a little stalkerish.

>30 rsterling:

Right. The former. We've debated whether you should be able to select or search for posts by a member before. I can see it both ways. For now, no change.

30> I'd love for any posts where I'm @ mentioned to appear in my Talk message list view, even if I don't watch/join the group. It'd be a nice way to "shout out". Granted, I could see the potential for abuse (harassing someone by continually randomly shouting out to them - but that could possibly be a TOS violation).

I know you love options, so to appease those for whom having shout outs appear in their message list will most likely be a war crime, you could have a check over in the nav bar for "include shout outs".

>32 brightcopy:
I like that.

>32 brightcopy: I'd be inclined to make shout-outs an entirely separate view.

And eventually we get into the need to specify which views we want to combine, rather than just having "Your World" or one individual one.

34> Well, if we had a checkbox-y Your World that was configurable - sure. But I'm not sure Tim is all that enthused about the idea, so if we get a non-configurable one instead, I forsee plenty of people saying "I want a unified view with everything EXCEPT shout outs."

I've been mulling how to organize the new Talk tab for weeks now. This isn't going to knock the answer free. I expect it will probably descend upon me in a dream.

Maybe there should be a new thread about this?

I can imagine people wanting a unified view with everything except shout-outs, but I'd imagine there would be even more demand for a unified view with everything except shout-outs, Your Books, and About Your Books. I see the latter two as a whole different sort of thing.

I think this might be a situation where radical change can't take. Shout-outs, however, may make people more comfortable with the core idea here. So, revisit this later?

39> So, revisit this later?

Probably. But you know since you're already making radical changes, there's only so much whine that people (myself included) can emit in a 24 hour period. Maybe you should just make all the changes you want now rather than drop them in during a quiet week when we have nothing better to do but pounce on them. ;)

there's only so much whine that people (myself included) can emit in a 24 hour period

Excellent. Another technique is to introduce two changes, knowing you'll pull one back. So, for example, together with member searching LibraryThing will introduce a feature to allow members to vote on whose picture is sexiest. Then we "concede" on the latter and remove it :)

41> You, sir, are an evil genius.

> 41

That could backfire, you know. People might stand up and cheer at a "sexiest picture" contest. It might result in the creation of a whole new Challenge group.

>43 lilithcat:

Early on at LT Abby and I wanted to find some good member profiles to showcase. So we basically printed out all the member photos to look for attractive people. Cat, cat, dog, tea, shelf, shelf, statue, cat, cat, cat...

I think we chose a cat.

>39 timspalding: I'm not really seeing opposition to the core idea here. Are you conflating this with the "see all posts by user" issue? Or do you just mean allowing everyone to see posts that you're mentioned in? There hasn't been much discussion of that at all.

> 44

My cat is sexier than your cat . . .

>44 timspalding:/46
I wish I had a cat...

> 47

http://www.barcshelter.org/

I have SO got that one beat.

26>

Yeah, I like a way to quickly link to particular posts as well.

(And a general escapes for all of these would be great as well)

>50 brightcopy:
My friend has that one beat. Here's her cat:

>51 lilithcat:
Why do they always do that? I snapped this one of a cat I once sat for:

> 54

They want tummy rubs. Whoever said cats don't like having their tummies rubbed was a dog owner.

Our Jasper wants his *chest* rubbed, not his tummy, and Isis wanted to dupe you into thinking she wanted her tummy rubbed, when what she really wanted was to make your hand into a chew-toy/pincushion.

55>

Some do. Our cat will claw you if you try. In my experience, male cats are far more likely to want a tummy rub than female cats. (The reason they sleep with their bellies up is that they're solar-powered, of course.)

My friend has that one beat. Here's her cat:

Disagree.

They want tummy rubs.

Some don't...

My cats like chest rubs, until they realize what's happening. Then they wanna fight about it.

>58 brightcopy:.1
Are  you  sure?

Only on LibraryThing can a thread about the implementation of Talk changes morph into a sexy kitty photo smack-down. =^. .^=

Also, loving the @nickname thingy, but it doesn't work on hyphenated usernames, as I just discovered. Only picks up the text before the hyphen. I'll cross post in the Bugs Я Us thread.

>61 clamairy:

Fixed.

#62 - Go raibh maith agat!

şey değil

60> Sure as I'm sitting here.

Oh wait, disregard that last one.

>65 brightcopy:
Damn, I've run out of photos. Then again, if I've got that many photos of a cat I've only twice and who lives in a different time zone.... well, you do the math.

Then they wanna fight about it.

Cats fight over all sorts of things:

66> Don't make me bring out more photos of the white cat. You should know that despite the above photo she was born with an enlarged cuteness factor.

All we need now is a photo of a cat sitting at a laptop which is showing LibraryThing with the following text superimposed on it...

OH HAI, IZ IN YR LT TRASHIN YR LITERARY REPUTAYSHUN!

And the world will cease to exist.

ps Don't you dare judge me because I speak LOLCAT!

That derail caught me a little like this poor cat:

Goodbye, cruel world! ;)

Yesterday he walked within two feet of a blackbird. The bird just ignored him.

> 54, 55

I've noticed that the cats who flop down on their backs like that tend to be long-haired cats. Maybe they are cooling off . . . and playing hand trap.

> 73

Marissa (#51) was a short hair. And so is Cat Cinq:

Shameless, the both of them!

>75 SilentInAWay:
It says "I come in peace"!

My eyes!

Given that the world didn't cease to exist as I thought it would in #69...

The more I see them used, the less I like the @ username concept. Everywhere I have seen it used (and I admit that this could just be the novelty of the feature) it could just as usefully be replaced with the username in question without the link to the user's profile.

I feel that simply typing a '@' before a username is just too easy and is going to lead to the database bloat that Tim* is so worried about.

I don't know what the solution is going to be. Forcing people to again use html to link to some other user's profile would slow down the overuse but it would not allow any of the proposed new gathering of information on when you have been 'shouted out' to.

*Note that here, there was no need for '@timspalding', and even if there was, it would be more polite to put 'Tim'.

>77 justjim: I don't see it as adding any particular value, but I figure it's relatively harmless.

Apart from the clashing colours and the database bloat, so do I. That database bloat could be an issue though.

I'm more worried about my dicey Interwebs connection that doesn't like to load threads that contain lots of images.

That said, #75 is terrifying, and #70 looks just like my passport picture.

Unnecessary clutter. Don't like it. And I don't mean the kitty pictures.

#81 - How can it be clutter when it takes up the same amount of space? Or do you mean it creates a visual distraction?

Yes, that's what I mean.

83:

Just curious, so if you could install a plugin into your browser or something so that these links were the same color as the text (black w/ the site's current styling), would you? I realize it's probably overkill.

I have to admit, I'm lukewarm about the @foo anyhow. I don't mention people by login all that often in this site and I rarely think as I'm writing "this person should be a link". The only thing I could see would be if having it give some alert or something like "Hey, you got mentioned" which I don't think it does...(going to test that in this post as well ;) )

@JonathanGorman

On the other hand, I can see potential in the idea (like an auto-alert) and it's not much hair off of my nose at the moment.

I've been considering why I'm lukewarm about this. I'm not really opposed to it, but it seems to me that a link should have some reason for being. This doesn't do that. Instead, it encourages digression from the subject (which we all know never happens around here).

There's just no point to "I agree with what @Lilithcat said in her last post." Now, "Look at the cute cat on @Lilithcat's profile" is something else again.

It could make things easier for the folks who track spammers and other persona non grata on LT. (Will also help in the sockpuppet tracking group, if/when we have a problem again.)

85> For me, the point would be when tied into the ability to see posts where you are mentioned. I might miss posts in some groups I do not watch/join, like Combiners! or Spam Fighters, etc. If people knew they could use @ to get my attention, it'd be nice. And just think - maybe it'd draw @timspalding's attention, too!

> tied into the ability to see posts where you are mentioned

Cooooooooming!

#87 & #88 - Oh, if only everything we wanted here were that easy! ;o)
*races off to link to Tim elsewhere*

Yeah. But I'm like some Lovecraftian horror. You should draw magical symbols and a circle on the floor. Or I may take away a feature.

OK, that's the third time in 24 hours I've come across a reference to circles on the floor. One in a book I'm reading, one from my husband's weird dream collection, and now this one. I just mention it in case I fall under some kind of a spell, and you can all say "WOW....she was warned, and she just let it happen!"

one from my husband's weird dream collection

Wait, I had that dream too!

>92 clamairy:

Love it. Love it.

>92 clamairy:

Can that be my Talk signature line from now on?

Absolutely! No one will mess with you now. (Had another word typed for mess, but... well...)

>93 timspalding:. OK, now I'm really scared.

92/94> Too bad it's a little too big for the message header bar icon.

>87 brightcopy:, 88
Yes, that would (will) be a lovely thing. When we're discussing something, it would be excellent to be able to post "by the way, I think @anglemark have read that book, perhaps they can tell us whether it really makes you insane?".

Obviously, the @ reference appears that it is going to have more "social" functionality, but this is pretty much just a return to the early days on LT where there was a User "touchstone" (via the rather clunky "three square bracket" interface). I don't recall why that went away, but it seems to me that having the @ is just "bringing something back" with a current default call.

 

Or, for posting something like, "Maroon Societies edited by @rixsal was a great source for my paper."

Which it was.

Judging by how I've seen it used so far, I think this feature is going to be pretty much useless. If people start "calling out" members every time they respond to them in a thread, the more interesting use of the feature (to see where we're being called out in threads that we weren't already participating in) will be overwhelmed by noise.

The main value seems to be in the added way to pester LT staff about feature or bug threads.

I don't recall the "user touchstone". But I didn't get "social" on LT for a while after joining, so probably it was gone before I got up to speed on such things.

92> So, when someone @-references another member, then that member's miniature animated avatar will appear in place of their name in the message? If you did the same for touchstones, wouldn't the LT talk threads then look something like this?:

When the was finished, the tired little red asked her friends, "Who will help me eat the ?"
"I will," hooted the lazy .
"I will," purred the sleepy .

"I will," inked the overextended .

Of course, with a few tweaks, this becomes a LibraryThing parable:

When the was finished, the overextended little asked his friends, "Who will help me eat the ?"
"I will," clucked the little red -- "provided that we can tweak the recipe to improve the taste."
"I will," purred the sleepy -- "provided that it tastes as good as the bread I ate yesterday."
"I will," hooted the lazy -- "provided that we take everybody's opinion into consideration:"

Vote: Who likes this bread?

Current tally: Yes 18, No 4, Undecided 14

Crazy!

#105 - Indeed. Yet I voted yes on the bread.

Anyone else mesmerized by the motion of the tentacles?

>106 by @clamairy

It would make a good vibro-massager. Cthulhu therapy.

#106 by @clamairy> Anyone else mesmerized by the motion of the tentacles?

I wasn't, because normally I have animated gifs turned off. Now I can't look away...

#103 by @SilentInAWay> You scoundrel! I totally wanted to be Cthulu. Gromit would have also sufficed.

Due to a bug, this thread has lost its subject. Anyone remember what it was?

#109 by @timspalding> "Link to members with @"

I don't think a squid is technically a bug, is it?

#111 by @laytonwoman3rd> Is it a squid? I totally thought it was Cthulu. A tiny, tiny Cthulu.

#109

"Link to members with @"

I didn't remember, but Google did.

It is indeed a tiny Cthulhu.

Even a tiny Cthulhu is to be feared.

 

I kind of like the fact that the topic is gone...

Ok, .

(>94 timspalding: established dibs on )

Hey , can't we put the moving Cthulhu as the topic??

#116 by @clamairy> Well, the new topic probably more accurately reflects what has happened in this thread. :D

#118 by @SilentInAWay> The horror.

I think Tim calling Cthulhu a bug is a risky strategy.

#117 by @SilentInAWay> Oh, and that's more like it. Bravo!

Hey! Isn't this a cat thread?

#123 by @clamairy> No, you may not. I think it's hiding under the bed right now.

Changed to "Link to members with @ / cat-fancy orgy"

Way to encourage the weirdness!

#125 by @timspalding> Are you seriously implying anyone could possibly fancy #75?

You'd be surprised how popular the hairless uglies are -- for cats as well as dogs.

I don't find the hairless cat repulsive at all, though I feel compelled to buy it a tiny sweater.

Yeah, not repulsive. But it should be hanging upside down in a butcher's shop.

>129 clamairy:
Or knit it one. :)

#131 by @AnnaClaire> But who's going to knit it a soul?

Not me: I don't have a pattern for one of those.

#131 - I never made it past the scarf stage in knitting. :oD

@timspalding: Now we really need a Facebook-style "Like" button for @clamairy 's #123 ( http://www.librarything.com/topic/116793#2723511 ) above. Just sayin'.

Dammit! I just realized the new @ stuff has blow away a bunch of my javascript bookmarklets. Can you please change this to use @@ instead or add support for @? Would be much appreciated. If you do change it to @@, it'd be best to do it as soon as possible to avoid losing too many of them when you switch.

>137 brightcopy:: This message has been deleted by its author.

I can imagine what you really wanted to say.