Rejected About highlighting other users

[Aquaa]

Hello,

I have a suggestion that would make highlights less apparent and annoying by adding a specific formula for users to highlight others. My name is "Aqua" on Pokemon Showdown, which means I've been dealing with disposable highlights from "Aqua Tail", "Aqua Jet", and "Aqua" from Konosuba (yes).

Don't think this applies to just me necessarily but any user with a name and/or alias that's easily highlightable. I'm here thinking that if we are to tag another user, we could do :user:, (user), @ user, or some type of symbol by the username that would trigger the highlight. Besides, I feel that like most of the other social media platforms where users @ another user to tag them, it would be practical to apply the same or similar way of "tagging" a user on PS!.

It feels very simple to just type out a name and highlight someone else on Pokemon Showdown, so implementing a feature like this would be pretty useful. If I were to tell fellow staff members and/or the chat to refer to me as "icey", then instead of just saying "Hey icey", it would go like "Hey, :icey:" and this would prevent alternate highlights from needlessly pinging the user if they just happen to be said randomly in the chat.

By no means do I believe this is 100% feasible because I am not a coder, but I think it's practical enough to constitute an official QOL suggestion.

(There's thousands where this came from).

Thanks for listening in either case!

 

[pants]

On an individual basis, users already have a couple of tools to personalize their highlight lists. If a certain room is the source of many unwanted highlights, room specific highlights exist. If certain phrases that include your name are used frequently, regex can be used to avoid unwanted highlights. If you just don’t want to highlight on any instance of just your name being said in chat, you can disable that in settings. Between all of this, it’s entirely possible to highlight on what you want and not much else. Coming from someone who also has a common word for a username, these tools are pretty handy if utilized properly.

On a community basis, I feel as if this change is pretty drastic and would be difficult for the average user to realize without being told. From a staffing perspective, people are often highlighted when moderation is needed (for example, in scavengers, when a leak happens and needs to be cleared quickly). Changing how people highlight overall would be difficult to make people aware of, since you can’t see whether or not you successfully highlighted a person without them telling you.

If individuals want to do this, then all they have to do is disable name highlights in settings, and add whatever taggable version they want, whether it be :icey: or @ Icey or what have you, and let people know that you wish to be tagged as such. However, I don’t feel the occasional errant highlight for the few users with common words as names is worth changing the entire highlight system for every other user.

 

[Aquaa]

Good points you bring up. The most thing I agree here is that if a suggestion of this magnitude becomes implemented, it would be difficult to adapt to this new system of highlighting. Indeed, there are various ways in which one can personalize their highlights which I am aware.

Though, in my mind, the idea is that :user:, @ user, etc would be used if you intend to highlight a user if you're speaking to them directly, whereas just simply typing out the username/alias would be an instance where you're just discussing a topic that includes that particular word without purposefully trying to highlight that user.

Quite frankly, I mainly suggest this just so that the formula of highlighting another user would be akin to other social media platforms. Normally, I prefer being referred to as "Aqua" in the chat if someone requires my attention so if I was needed, the user(s) would type out "@ Aqua" or :Aqua: etc. The convenience of tabbing is still maintained so that wouldn't be an issue either.

Given your solid points though, I suppose there is enough options to customize highlights and work around it in a way. That said, I don't mind if this suggestion isn't feasible or practical enough; it's more or less, in my opinion, meant to minimize needless highlights.

 

[Kalalokki]

Regex your highlights and your problems will go away without extra coding.

 

[Aquaa]

Regex your highlights and your problems will go away without extra coding.

Oh, that's what Regex is. Cool, thanks for showing me this. Have a nice day.

 

[Irpachuza]

Regex your highlights and your problems will go away without extra coding.

Shouldnt that thread be pinned, or at least linked on the FAQ section of the Rules & Resources thread? A paragraph about higlighting could be useful between the FAQs; afaik "How to highlight someone" is a fairly common question in the Help room, too

 

[Annika]

regex is love, regex is life

also yeah linking to regex resources could be worth it, although it's not really necessary for 95% of users

 

[Anubis]

While I can understand the argument for "People hate change", I have also seen many users who don't know that saying someone's name highlights them and manage to do it a lot before they're told to cut it out.

I still think it odd that the answers to "I get a lot of unwanted highlights but don't want to disable it completely" are either "Use another name", "Learn Regex", or "Deal with it." Imagine if Discord notified you every time someone said your name in casual conversation with no @'s, quotes, or replies, and you had to read an external guide to specially configure it to not annoy you just so people could talk about a word in your name.

 

[Aquaa]

While I can understand the argument for "People hate change", I have also seen many users who don't know that saying someone's name highlights them and manage to do it a lot before they're told to cut it out.
Imagine if Discord notified you every time someone said your name in casual conversation with no @'s, quotes, or replies, and you had to read an external guide to specially configure it to not annoy you just so people could talk about a word in your name.

These are precisely the points I was trying to get across. While Regex may be an exceptionally helpful feature for these issues, it's not really child's play for people like me who have zero idea or knowledge of coding. I had to actually constantly DM Apathetic Inaction to manually create the command formula to get rid of Aqua Jet and Aqua Ring highlights and much more.

Anyhow this doesn't bother me as much as how simple it is to coincidentally post a message with a name that highlights another user -- in other words, tag a user without a @. It would be more practical to make it synonymous with that of other social media platforms because users arriving to PS! may likely be experienced with said social media platforms. It's not too difficult to adhere to the way 'tagging' a user works, but I think the Regex argument applies more to removing/adding specific highlights, etc.

 

[Anubis]

Some more thoughts, even if I am not pushing for a solution:

The current highlight system causes some bizarre workarounds. It shouldn't be normal use of chat to italicize people's names, insert spaces/symbols, or truncate usernames in order to avoid bothering them with highlights.

It's one thing to use regex to opt-in to specific highlight patterns and yet another to tell people to learn regex to opt out of accidental highlights. The first is something a power user will do, while dodging false highlights should be something that's more easily available to a casual user. Is it desirable user behavior for young and/or not-technically-advanced users to be told to learn regex or disable everything?

Ultimately, I am no longer in a position of authority and don't need to be highlighted, so I opted for "disable all highlights", but think about how this affects anyone with a common word as a username.

 

[pokeblade101]

With this idea in mind, you could potentially make it so that there are 2 highlight lists.

One with phrases or words in which you would be highlighted from just being mentioned in chat and one where you would specifically need to use a special character like @ or :user: like Aqua said to get highlighted from it.

So by default, you would need to use the special character to highlight someone by username and if the user wants to be highlighted by just being mentioned in chat then they can put their username or other phrase in that highlight list.

I don't know how difficult this is in code but this is just an idea.

You would probably need a way to promote this as a change like this can go largely unnoticed.

 

[Aquaa]

With likely no hopes of reaching a unanimous conclusion, I have decided to briefly bump this suggestion - which is something I don't usually do.

In response(s) to my idea of making the highlighting system synonymous with other social media platforms such as Discord and Facebook, regex was offered as a solution. However, Anubis made some valuable points, which I will very briefly reiterate. For newcomers and people inexperienced with tools such as regex; that requires at least some portion of code material, I think resorting to it as means of not being highlighted accomplishes the opposite of "quality of life" in a way. I would also like to reiterate that I've had to constantly consult for someone's assistance to refrain from being accidentally highlighted by multiple words/phrases.

Since discussion took place in this thread - and even before that, I've been constantly getting aimlessly pinged - either jokingly or pure accidentally. As a Lobby staff member, it just creates an unnecessary layer of inconvenience. I wholeheartedly prefer if we changed the way highlighting other users works. I can understand if making changes to this in such a way can be difficult from a technical standpoint. Even so, this idea & discussion ended rather inconclusively, and I would wholeheartedly advocate for this change. I don't believe that PS! highlighting functionality needs to have that burdensome aspect, and I believe @'ing users to get their attention is far more ideal, especially in a setting where each user can be seen clearly and where needless highlights are incredibly common.

I feel very strongly about this, and I would at least like to get more thoughts on this, if not have it approved.

 

[Aquaa]

Regarding this suggestion and my most recent post, Mia explained to me in detail exactly the factors that would make implementing this idea difficult. As much as I originally felt strongly about this suggestion, I totally understand that it can take a toll in several ways, so I will just acknowledge this in this post to save the DEVs and staff the trouble from having to explain what Mia already explained to me.

I am aware a regex guide exists, but I am having trouble comprehending it. So if there are any volunteers in place to assist those who prefer to learn it more "kinesthetically" (with someone else), rather than on their own, that would be lovely.

Thanks for putting up with my ceaseless talk once more; feel free to shelve this.