Right now, the implementation requires an “@” character because that’s what we look for. I can think of ways of making it nicer in the future, but it’s not a trivial task.
Hi Paul,
I think that for most (of my) users, they wouldn’t know what an @mention is, or that they could @mention someone.
Making it as “simple” as creating the mention when the users name was typed would be so much better.
I have no doubt that it isn’t a small task, but I think it would be a very worthy one.
Use Paul his BP Labs plugin to make it more intuitive for the user.. it shows a nice popup as soon as someone types the @ character: https://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/bp-labs/
And some preview images: http://bp-tricks.com/featured/add-mentions-auto-complete-to-your-buddypress-site-with-the-bp-labs-plugin/
But this still relies on the user knowing they need to @someone.
What I want is that when ever someone mentons another user by referencing their name only, it does the @mention function.
Not having to type @someone is far more intuitive. Just type someone instead.
Much more betterer…. ;P