Ok, so what's all this about @xx posters being "rude"?

Perhaps it's a product of being old and a bit weary at the moment, but I can't iamagine having the energy to care about someone @ing me.

If the function is ever used as a tool for extra goady fuckery on another board on MN, a particular understanding regarding it may develop.

If someone has set themselves up repeatedly as an avowed adversary of the mean harpies on FWR, and then spends a lot of time whining about the fact that when they used the function that has been used by goady fuckers to harrass FWR posters in the past, some FWR posters were insufficiently nice about saying 'Don't do that', then perhaps the avowed adversary might want to be thinking along the lines of 'If the cap fits...'

Seriously. The reasons for the attitude towards it on FWR have been explained, at some length now. If you don't like it, you've made that plain. Continuing to complain is only going to entrench the feeling that particular people have axes to grind and is hardly going to remove the perspective that goady fuckery is the order of the day for some.

I don't th ink it is rude. ( not that I have learned how to use the bold thing). It will depends on context eg on a thread about a topic there might be 3 recent posts and you are just answering one point from one person above so I might say "jane, my student children do XYZ"

There is no need to @ someone when they are already on the thread I feel. And I have seen it done by a fair few people just to annoy others who have asked for it not to be done.

Doesn't bother me as such, as my MN emails go straight to junk, but I imagine someone who actually takes notice of @ s and reads all their emails would be really annoyed by someone continuing to do it even though they are already currently part of the conversation!

Very recent member here - I had no idea this was considered bad form

It isn't "bad form" Some posters don't like it. That is their prerogative and they can turn off the notifications.

God I had no idea it was! I namechange a lot too so nobody will know I'm apologising to them... but er, sorry!

There is nothing to apologise for.

God I had no idea it was! I namechange a lot too so nobody will know I'm apologising to them... but er, sorry!

Very recent member here - I had no idea this was considered bad form and I'd rather assumed that the person being @-ed got a notification on the site, not by email (the way most forums do it).

So if you want to thank someone, or ask a specific follow-up question, the only way to do it without the @ is to bold their name and hope - in a large and quickly growing thread - that they see it?

Serfisafleur - it definitely seems to be as it's only on this board that you get told it's rude and for others to chime in with yeah, give up, it's rude!
Even if you've literally only ever done it the once.

I remember a specific TRA poster several months ago (now banned I think) who would repeatedly @ posters, even when they were already on the thread talking to them. So you didn't just get one email from them - you got a shedload. It was clearly deliberate and it felt like it was meant to intimidate. I think it's been an issue on here ever since. On the other boards I go on it's used without a second thought.

Oh fuck, I didn't know it did that. Sorry to everyone I've been @ing cos I was too lazy to do the bolding.

@ButchyRestingFace
Is this really a feminist issue?

Hiroo, ta, I turned it off. Sorry I didn't hear you yelling. If you'd bothered to read the thread you'd have known.

I read that as @xx and thought it was some kind of targeted attack on women!

Does bolding trigger an email? This is news to me

Bolding doesn't trigger an email, the @ function does though.
So not sure why bolding would be a problem if anyone is saying it is?
It literally just makes it easy to see who you're referring to.

I do wonder why this seems to be so pertinent on the feminist chat thread as opposed to others...

It seems to me that it's used as "I'm a woman, stop shouting at me, it's rude".
I have literally done it once and got "stop atting me." For others to say yes, stop, atting it's rude.
Me - whuh? Ok I won't then now I know it's a thing with some. Cos I'm not a dick.
Some like it though. So for them, I would.

I do wonder why this seems to be so pertinent on the feminist chat thread as opposed to others...

Bolding doesn’t. @ ing does. Unless the person has gone and turned it off.

Does bolding trigger an email? This is news to me.

I posted on AIBU yesterday to explain my position. I'll reiterate it here.

I don't have an issue with the @ function existing. It has uses - I don't mind it used to get my attention if I am being asked something specific and haven't already posted on the thread, or posted for some time because I may have just stopped following along.

If I'm already engaging in the thread, I'd prefer not to get an email unnecessarily, so if I get @ed, I will ask the person to bold me instead. I'm not unreasonable about it, but I know a number of other posters on FWR don't like it either, so I think it's a small part of the particular etiquette of the board that a significant number don't like it over used, so that is a thing. It's not a 'rule', it's just something which appears to have developed and is useful to be aware of.

It has been used persistently to me, even when I have asked the posters in question to stop, and I don't see why I should turn off a function I do sometimes find useful just because a few people have been unpleasant bullies.

you wouldn’t expect the vocal minority to ask everyone else to stop using this feature simply as it appears to offend them in some convoluted and bizarre way - that is not the sort of society we live in thankfully

Are you being ironic?

@PebbleDashed here’s an idea, just turn it off. Also, I think feminism has bigger battles to fight and win than somehow equating the use of ‘@‘ to be symbolic of some wider struggle.

This is a feature introduced by MN at the request of its users, most appear to like it, some don’t - surely you wouldn’t expect the vocal minority to ask everyone else to stop using this feature simply as it appears to offend them in some convoluted and bizarre way - that is not the sort of society we live in thankfully

I have an anonymous email address that I only use for things where you have to give an email address but don't want contact. I never check it. @ away. It passes me by.

Likewise I have a £17 Nokia payg spare phone for emergencies. I use that number if I'm required to supply a number to someone/an organisation I don't want contacting me. I used it recently for some website or another I was signing up to. Next time I switched on that phone there were a mass of missed calls and messages from a variety of numbers - they had definitely shared my details. I recommend this system.

It also feels like calling me my full name (you know - like Annabelle Jayne Smith for example rather than Anna or Belle or whatever my nickname is). I use a short form of names usually when I bold them, and the @ is full name only.