Comment by altairprime
2 years ago
I don’t expect support to ever be added by HN actual. Some third-party may code it into search, but HN isn’t designed to be used as a “send a notification” platform in any regard. Expanding to support @username pings would be a serious undertaking and contradict the site’s minimalism and simplicity.
People have been reinventing this syntax here for a long time. It has remained useless here for a long time. There is no groundswell of rebellion opportunity. You’ll just have to send an email.
I bet you see this response, which demonstrates that it is a sort of engagement platform.
Same as in you profile you can view your own comments (and others) , scanning the message for an @ symbol and checking for a valid username I wouldn't consider to be a major undertaking.
As I said in my comment, searching for @username vs username is much easier already.
But yes, a third party could do it. Perhaps @dangrossman (yes, I did that) may be interested.