Pinging Players

A feature on many sites I've played is the ability to ping players so that they're notified when you mention them in a forum post. I've often wished that we had such a feature here. It's a very handy way to notify people that they've won an auction, for example. It works by typing @InsertIDNumberHere; to ping me, you'd type @86327 (and then whatever message you want to send me). I do my best to keep up with the threads I post on, and usually I'm able to do so, but sometimes I miss them.

If this feature is added, I'd like there to be a way to turn off the notifications. It can get a little annoying to me sometimes, though it is useful, and I imagine others feel the same way. (It's mainly a small forum I frequent on which it bothers me. It's not very active and therefore I view the pings as somewhat extraneous.)

I do realize we have a subscription feature, but I believe that's only for deluxe members, and it doesn't have quite the same effect. There are threads that some people post in for which they'd like to be notified if someone mentioned their name, but otherwise they wouldn't want to know of the activity. I also think it should be available for both basic and deluxe accounts. Aside from me viewing it as a feature that could become a highly useful method of communication that it feels rude to exclude certain users from, it could also cause confusion when basic members wonder why their pings don't work, or don't even realize that their ping didn't work.

It's not an essential feature, by any means, but I imagine that it would see a lot of use. Say in art forums, auction threads, etc.

This would be VERY useful in art threads, it would really improve the communication and make everything easier for both, the seller and the buyer

I was actually thinking of suggesting this myself, so I'm glad to see someone else who likes the idea. I've always really loved this on other sites. As mentioned above, it's very useful for art threads, because people usually create "ping lists" where people can sign up to be notified when slots open up and things like that. Even better is that ping lists and pings are good for signing up to be notified when certain offspring go up for sale, etc. There's a lot of potential for people to get buyers' attention. I've seen a lot of people use ping lists in auctions when people want a last day notification, or when they have certain horses they plan to breed and want to know if anyone wants to be alerted when the offspring are born. Stuff like that.

It's a nice alternative to subscriptions because it means you only have to be notified to posts that specifically relate to you, though obviously subscriptions still have a lot of uses too.

Last edited on 2016-08-18 at 23:10:24 by Wicked

This feature is on some other forums I frequent, and I really miss it on EV. It's very useful.