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I wanted to comment on something in this answer. But when I type

@si

no auto-completion kicks in.

If I type out the users name, the whole @name is removed from the posted comment.
Why is this happening?

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  • Editors can be replied to, as well as the moderator closing a topic (including notifications), but they're never autocompleted. Related.
    – Daniel Beck Mod
    Feb 8, 2012 at 15:29
  • I'm seeing sinni in your example and Daniel on my answer below for auto-complete, so I'm not sure why you weren't seeing sinni on yours.
    – DMA57361
    Feb 8, 2012 at 15:35
  • @DMA57361 Now that another user has replied to the answer mentioned above, sinni is autocompleted. This seems to confirm what you've said. Feb 8, 2012 at 15:39

1 Answer 1

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If only a post's author and one comment are having a conversation then any @ notifications between them are removed from the start of comments on the grounds they are considered noise because post owners are always notified of comments whether you @ them or not.

This will not happen if any other person is involved in that comment thread.

(For ref see https://meta.stackexchange.com/a/97290/147926 and https://meta.stackexchange.com/a/97099/147926 among probably others on MSO)

For the sake of completeness, I guess I should point to the How do comment @ replies work? FAQ post, in case you want more detailed information in general.


As a side note, comments that attempt to ping multiple users (ie, multiple @'s) are also blocked, the work around (backticks) will cause only the first @ to be notified.

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  • It's no longer possible to even mention multiple users with the @. Trying to do so results in error, even if only one of them is an applicable recipient. Try to reply to this comment @-addressing e.g. Oliver and Ivo.
    – Daniel Beck Mod
    Feb 8, 2012 at 15:26
  • The exception is the first comment to a post. It appears to not contain any @ validation, since only one user can ever be notified.
    – Daniel Beck Mod
    Feb 8, 2012 at 15:32
  • @DanielBeck I've attempted to cover pinging multiple people in the last paragraph, and the 'fix' is to use backticks (which doesn't really fix anything 'cos the @'s then don't work!).
    – DMA57361
    Feb 8, 2012 at 15:32
  • I seriously must be going blind :-/ Sorry about that.
    – Daniel Beck Mod
    Feb 8, 2012 at 15:32
  • After reading a bit more about it, I think my main problem was that I didn't see it as a tool of notification but rather thought it was used to signal to whom parts of a comment are directed. Feb 8, 2012 at 18:40
  • @OliverSalzburg that's fair enough, personally I'd also considered it so too original, with the notification being a happy side bonus. But as you can see from the links in my answer there was plenty of resistance to the @-removal/blocking when it was introduced.
    – DMA57361
    Feb 8, 2012 at 18:52

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