"Ears Burning" Hack

[Elenna]

I accidentally posted this in the wrong place, so here it is!

I'm looking for a hack that will notify a user (via PM, popup, or even just a box at the top of the screen) when their name is mentioned in a forum that they have access to.

Ideally, this can be used with a vB Code (like [user] or [notify]) so that a poster can "flag down" another member when they are requesting a response from this member.

I think a hack like this would be very useful. On busy boards, important posts can get "lost", and things can stay unresolved if someone doesn't notice that something in requested of them.

[shovel]

I think this might be a bit shabby on the performance end but I can see the benefit from the forum goers. Basically what you would have to do is on input from a new reply, thread or post edit, query all user names from the users table. Once done, check the names array against the "whole" words in the post. As the matches are made you would store an array of their relative user IDs. Finally, you'd progressively fire off the PMs in a while loop to those who (I would assume) was willing to receive such responses via PM. As an administrative tool, you'd probably have the ability to "walk backwards" and cycle through many posts performing the same task. If you'd like to go deeper, you might even create a scheduled task for doing so. Nice idea Elenna.

I might have to take you up on it.

[Elenna]

Thanks! I'm not sure if it would be 'easier' to implement, or better on performance, but what if the text it searched was surrounded by appropriate vB (BB?) code, so it would be a poster-driven 'command' instead of searching the entire text of the post?


Edit: I'd certainly support users being able to turn on/off these notifications.

[shovel]

Yes that would work, but ultimately you're still going to be scanning the data on input and you would most definitely need a list of user names to check against. You know what? I think I'll give it a shot today. You'll be marked as a contributor so keep an eye out.

[Elenna]

Wahooo Thanks so much for taking a stab at this!! NO rush whatsoever. Just a little idea floating around my head!

[shovel]

No problem! I think it'll be popular once word gets out and we get a few installs. One of the biggest problems out there is that people voice their ideas such as you, but no one ever takes the time to read them and give their own thoughts. Keep up the ideas, at least I'll read them haha.

[Lynne]

I know at least two users on my site that would love this. They are always doing a search to see if someone has mentioned them!

[logicuk]

yeah i think this would also make a nice mod. good idea mate

[shovel]

I'm about 65% complete with this mod. I'm finished with the lookup and insert methods for the hack at least. So far when you post a new thread or new reply (i think edits as well), the message is checked against a Regular Expression string with all the usernames provided. When one is matched its added to the array of matches and written to the database. Should I show the posts mentioning the user in their UserCP? Or in a PM (but from who?)?

[Elenna]

*cheers* Many thanks for your work on this!

Obviously others are interested, so please take their feedback into consideration as well.

But my thoughts are:

- Links in UserCP is okay, but I know that my users don't currently check their UserCP. Would be most helpful in a box on the top of home page or search page, etc, or an AJAX box.
- PM is also good - could be from admin-defined user, or possibly from the person who mentioned them.
- Perhaps the above could be a user-selectable option?

Shovel, are you using it with the bbcode option, or it's just scanning all text of the message.

At least for my board, it would be most useful to have the bbcode option, mainly because people resort to "nicknames" that wouldn't be parsed correctly... so if they wanted to "flag" a person, the intended recipient wouldn't be notified. Of course, if they took the time to use the BBCode, they could simply type out the member's full name!

Of course (and this is a really comlpex idea, just mulling it) there could be an option in each person's UserCP, where they type in their Nicknames, and they get notified with those texts too. Could be abused, though, if people put in names of other people to 'spy' on them.

Question - are forum permissions taken into consideration with this? If someone is talking about a member if a Moderator forum, we wouldn't want the user to get a PM about it