@mentions in markdown for discussion, beta, ascents

[brendanheywood]

ETA Timeline: 6 months - 1 year #1253

Basically adopt the common convention that most other sites have implemented: @mentions

https://support.twitter.com/articles/14023-what-are-replies-and-mentions

https://github.com/blog/821

Anywhere that markdown is accepted we should accept stuff like @scd @cgome. Just like github these will become auto linked to that persons profile. I see this having a lot of value in the 'history' beta field where lots of names are mentioned. In some context will have extra side effects:

• @mentions in discussion will add that person to the discussion (same as github, exactly equivalent to inviting them in the top left corner)
• @mentions in FA field, basically the same as what it currently does but a little more structured
• @mentions in ascent comments for seconded, or someone who gave beta, or someone who lent you that extra #3 cam
• @mentions in photos same as currently

Just like twitters mentioned page, we'd have a page, or notification etc that tell people 'Hey you've been mentioned in 10 ascents', you can see those ascents and then the 'I ticked that too' function.

Some places that take names, like the ascent form, are quite ambiguous about accepting a username, or a non-username, and it's not obvious how to add multiple people. With this in place we could quite easily just merge the 'with' field with the 'comment' field.

Implementation things:

• usernames can change, so internally all @username will be mapped to @12345 when stored and then when edited mapped back to the current username.
• will accept the @ and then the username or their real name in the dropdown search
• we'll have a funky JS dropdown fo helping select usernames just like github.
• extra template just like auto linked routes / areas.
• anywhere a username is shown, add the @ prefix to reinforce it's usage across the site.

[brendanheywood]

Nope all good was thinking exactly the same.