Hubski has an affectionate tradition of giving people shorter nicknames (not dissimilar from the Russian tradition of dimunitive names, which is adorable). Not everyone is blessed with one-syllable names on Hubski. The list, for such a small community, is extensive:
kleinbl00 is kb
thenewgreen is TNG
_refugee_ is ref
OftenBen is OB
blackbootz is bootz
insomniasexx is insom
johnnyFive is j5 (though I admit: I might have been the only one using it so far)
and there's me as TFG
(those are the ones I know and remember; don't mean to exclude anyone)
So, my idea is to allow registering "mention" nicknames. Those are the nicknames that, when used with the @@ sort of a mention, link to the appropriate user (for example, @TFG@ would link to /user/ThatFanficGuy). This is to aide information propagation through mentions that are quicker to type.
Each user chooses their mention (a single short nickname - that should be enough for everyone), which they set in their settings. Mention-nicknames should be allowed to change, though I don't see who would change theirs once a short name is stuck. For example, someone once called me FFguy over IRC, but I've always been TFG for everyone around.
It might be useful. My worry is that it would interfere with writing. I imagine it would have to be a window of suggestions, which would hover over the text field - on a forum where nothing overshadows nothing (except header, and it does so gracefully). Not arguing you should put more work in than you have to, and not saying what I suggest is necessary, but it could be a nice little thing to allow Hubskifolk to address (while mentioning) each other with affectionates.
mk, a better idea: allowing the at-mention to use a second argument as a display name. For example: turns into: TNG has been of great service to Hubski! If I understand correctly, all you have to do is tweak the parser a little for possible presence of second argument. @thenewgreen|TNG@ has been of great service to Hubski!
I think I just went through the exact same sequence as mk. Anyway, I guess am_U is preferred, but I'll respond to anything that makes my chubwheel (LOL, thank you, autocorrect!) orange. Speaking of which, I owe you a response, been thinkin' about it. But it's related to sex, so I gotta tread carefully.
I did. Best thing is: after you sanitize it for HTML and JS, you can input multiple-word names that way ("that fanfic guy, you know"), because all you have to do is bring the string between the separator and the ending at-sign as the link text.Oh did you create a link there?
Oh my goodness, this would be a must have feature. Nobody can ever get my name right... I blame my parents. ;)
alt characters and spellings - that's where i see the most potential value - i have had to re-send messages multiple times because i kept fucking a name up, either trying to recall it from memory and forgetting a double character or number in place of an alpha, or etc etc etc. are username cap sensitive because if so, that's the best reason i've heard for this idea yet also that would be annoying af if so and i believe that we are smarter/better than that
That doesn't negate what I said. Really the question is more how hard it would be to implement versus the ease for the users. Another possibility would be to perhaps allow autocomplete once you start typing @....?
This would be better, but I'm not sure how code/processing power intensive this would be for something like hubski. I am a coding cretin, only now embarking upon my second ever programming project.Another possibility would be to perhaps allow autocomplete once you start typing @....?
I like referring to johnnyFive as j5. One of the first things I thought of seeing the username choice. There's a coder for Artix Entertainment, put into the game as an NPC, that goes by j6, so it's a bit of an nostalgic thing.