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Summoning/Tagging Feature

Started by Sophus, August 17, 2010, 11:23:58 PM

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Sophus

I don't know if such a feature exists for phpBB but I was thinking it might be useful to have the ability to summon someone to a particular thread. Could work similar to the "tagging" feature some websites have. For example if we could write @Someone to notify us when we're being talked about. So even if you don't make to a certain part of the forum during a certain time if another member says, "this sounds like a science question best answered by @Squid" even though its inception was under 'Religion'. Or, "Sorry, new poster, but you seem like a troll. What do you think @Whitney?"

Could make things more efficient but I dunno, maybe it would change the feel of the forum too much, especially if it's over-used. Just tossing the idea up in the air.
‎"Christian doesn't necessarily just mean good. It just means better." - John Oliver

Squid

From what I know, I don't think phpBB offers anything like that but I could be wrong.  If they don't you should suggest it to the development team because that's an awesome idea.

Whitney

I think it's a neat idea...if there is something like that I'll try to add it later.

Sophus

Haha. I did a Google to see if this feature already existed or how I could submit the idea - somebody had suggested it to them back in July and described it in nearly the same why as I did:

QuoteWhat about tagging other forum members in posts?...
like now i could tag u like this: @eviL3
and u would be "summoned" here by a notification

So who knows, maybe it's in the works...
By the way, what's MOD?
‎"Christian doesn't necessarily just mean good. It just means better." - John Oliver

Tank

In this context a MOD is a modification for the phpBB software the forum runs on. They have a forum where one can ask these things.

The way we could consider doing this could be in a pair of tags such as [invite][/invite] placed around the users name e.g. I think [invite]Tank[/invite] would be interested in this. This could have the effect of also changing the tagged name to a particular text style e.g. I think Tank would be interested in this.

The code behind the tags could identify the post the tags are in and the intended recipient and send the recipient a PM along the lines of

PM From: Post invite
PM Title: Post invite
PM message: You have been invited to view post 'xyz' in thread 'ABC'

When the user submits or previews the post the BBCode would have to confirm the user name in the tags was a real user within the database and respond with a suitable error message if not.

There could be multiple tags in a post or multiple invites in in one set of tags e.g.
a) [invite]Tank[/invite] [invite]sophus[/invite] [invite]Whitney[/invite]
b) [invite]Tank, sophus, Whitney[/invite].
I would think from a use perspective a) would be better, while b) would probably be slightly easier to code.

Any thoughts?

EDIT The tags would have to be inactive if between [quote][/quote] tags otherwise the invited user would get an invite each time the post was quoted.
If religions were TV channels atheism is turning the TV off.
"Religion is a culture of faith; science is a culture of doubt." ― Richard P. Feynman
'It is said that your life flashes before your eyes just before you die. That is true, it's called Life.' - Terry Pratchett
Remember, your inability to grasp science is not a valid argument against it.

philosoraptor

I think this is an excellent idea.
"Come ride with me through the veins of history,
I'll show you how god falls asleep on the job.
And how can we win when fools can be kings?
Don't waste your time or time will waste you."
-Muse