Allow mentioned users to distinguish between mentioned-in-passing and please-provide-input mentions
Description
GitLab currently allows users to @-mention
other users by including their the twitter-form @username
in any markdown field. This creates a TODO for that user, and this is widely used within GitLab to draw peoples' attention to issues, notes or merge requests that they should be aware of, or respond to. It is also used 'in passing' in notes like:
I asked @alice and she said ...
Reported by @bob
etc.
So we have two types of mention - one expects some form of action from the mentioned user, the other does not, and there's no way for the mentioned user to distinguish between the two at the moment.
Proposal
I'd like us to introduce a refinement of @-mentions
that I'm tentatively calling @-summons
. It would look like this:
@alice! wdyt to this change?
Credit to @bob for the idea
The @-summons
form appends an exclamation mark, !
, to the normal @-mention
. Both forms would act as TODOs and mentions in exactly the same way as they do now, but we could, at the very least ,allow mentioned users to filter their TODOs by summons, and perhaps put summons before mentions in the default ordering.
Links / references
/cc @smcgivern! @DouweM