1352571 - Support using user mentions in comments to tag people for needinfo

Status: NEW

(bugzilla.mozilla.org :: Extensions, enhancement)

Description

[Emma Humphries ☕️🎸🧞‍♀️✨ (she/they) [:emceeaich] (Pacific Time) use needinfo]

+++ This bug was initially created as a clone of Bug #634947 +++

Following twitter's '@username' convention for mentions, GitHub uses '@username' for mentions which users get emailed on. 

We could do the same for needinfo-ing users.

User could be mentioned by:

* [e-mail], GSuite style
* @[e-mail], Twitter/Github/Mastodon style
* :nickname, if user mentioned has a `:nickname` reference in their 'realname' field

I thought we had a BMO bug for this but could not find it.

Comment 1

[Emma Humphries ☕️🎸🧞‍♀️✨ (she/they) [:emceeaich] (Pacific Time) use needinfo]

Probably should be blocked on private bugs, since a private bug may be in reference to an action on a bmo user account (suspension/ban/etc.)

Comment 2

[Emma Humphries ☕️🎸🧞‍♀️✨ (she/they) [:emceeaich] (Pacific Time) use needinfo]

Doesn't need to be backfilled on existing bugs.

Comment 3

[Gregory Szorc [:gps]]

I swear I filed a bug for this feature request (automatically setting needinfo or some other flag when there is a user mention in the form of a question). But, I searched and couldn't find the bug. I also couldn't find a mailing list conversation. So I guess it was either an IRC or IRL conversation with some subset of {mcote, glob, dylan, etc} and that's how I ended up being CCd on bug 634947.

FWIW, I think user mentions + notifications is the single biggest feature I wish BMO had. It is a subset of a larger feature of "help me find the bugs I need to look at."

Comment 4

[Emma Humphries ☕️🎸🧞‍♀️✨ (she/they) [:emceeaich] (Pacific Time) use needinfo]

:kohei, would you estimate this work? I agree that this is a feature we should have.

Comment 5

[Kohei Yoshino]

I also want to see this, but Bugzilla actually doesn't have usernames like GitHub, Twitter, etc. Adding :nickname to the real name field is just a local practice on BMO. I think Bug 218917 needs to be solved first so the feature will be usable in the upstream as well.

Comment 6

[Kohei Yoshino]

I meant Bug 1372631.

Comment 7

[Emma Humphries ☕️🎸🧞‍♀️✨ (she/they) [:emceeaich] (Pacific Time) use needinfo]

Could we do it with the [e-mail] convention like Google?

Comment 8

[Kohei Yoshino]

It's an option but feels weird to me. No one uses Google+ any more, while most people are familiar with @username mentions on GitHub and Twitter. Perhaps we could implement prototype code using :username lookups on BMO first :)

Comment 9

[Mark Côté [:mcote]]

FWIW I've seen systems support @<real name>, e.g. CASA (our legal/finance-review tool).

Comment 10

[Gregory Szorc [:gps]]

@username is pretty ubiquitous (GitHub, Bitbucket, GitLab, and Twitter). It is 1 character, so easy to type. A single sigil on the left side makes it easier to implement autocomplete. I think we should go with the common solution rather than create more fragmentation between our tools and the rest of the world.

Comment 11

[Kohei Yoshino]

As mentioned in Bug 1474153, colon could be used for emoji input. We should have the same behaviour as GitHub not to confuse users.

* @username to notify that person (probably needinfo on Bugzilla)
* :emoji: to input common emoji

https://blog.github.com/2011-03-23-mention-somebody-they-re-notified/

Comment 12

[Dylan Hardison [:dylan] (he/him)]

Note the new /rest/user/suggest API (on bugzilla-dev) will take a match-string beginning with @.

e.g. /rest/user/suggest?match=@dkl

Comment 13

[Dylan Hardison [:dylan] (he/him)]

It'd be good to encourage people to use nicknames, as having a nickname set makes the migration path away from email as user identifier more straight-foreword.

Comment 14

[Kohei Yoshino]

I guess the Markdown work needs to be done first.

Comment 15

[Kohei Yoshino]

We need a comment parser for this and Bug 12926.