[Gametize Tech] Knowledge: Rich Text Support - Mentions

Background

Mentioning other users in applications is a common feature. It is sometimes also called tagging or colloquially to “@” or “at” someone (used as a verb) in your post or comment. The use of mentions are primarily for social engagement and content sharing. On most platforms, getting mentioned will add a notification to the notification or inbox of the user which serves as a socially driven re-engagement feature which feeds off their own presence on the app - generally, the more active and the larger the following the user has, the more mentions they will get and vice versa; this is a good way to scale engagement relative to the user’s desire for interaction and so minimizes the impact of over- or under- engagement which can occur from pre-defined engagement intervals.

In the Gametize context, mentions are supported in the following components:

Mentioning someone in a Topic comment and threads section
Mentioning someone in a Challenge comment and threads section
Mentioning someone in a Completion comment and threads section

Players are also informed if they were mentioned via the notifications module.

API Usage

Input

Mentions is supported on the Actions API for /comments and /comment_threads.
Players may be mentioned in comment/threads by via the following tag format: [uid:xxx]. For example, to mention player with userID: 123, the tag in text will be as follows: [uid:123].

Key description:

type - referring to the type of context (i.e. Topic, Challenge, Completion)
type_id - referring to the context ID (i.e. Topic ID, Challenge ID, Completion ID)
content - referring to the input (i.e. the comment)

Character Limit Handling
As mentioning player via tagging is a special function and the tagged player’s name is not considered a text input, the tag (i.e. [uid:123]) and the resulting name display (i.e. @John Brick) are NOT counted towards character limit.

For illustration - Consider the text: Tagging myself because it is cool [uid:2]
Our back-end will process it in the following manner:

Comment char limit is set: 100 
Comment char length (With mentions): 41 
Total mention chars: 7 
Comment char length (Without mentions): 34 
Comment char exceeded: false

Output

Currently, attributed text parser have been implemented on API /comments and /threads.

Notifications for Mentions

When player being mentioned in a comment or a thread, a notification will be sent to the player. The Player Web and Mobile App should navigate user to the comment page or thread page when the notification is clicked.

Mentioned in a Comment

Key description:

type
- comment_completion - referring to commenting on a completion; Open completion comment page for when clicked
- comment_challenge - referring to commenting on a challenge; Open challenge comment page for when clicked
- comment_topic - referring to commenting on a topic; Open topic comment page for when clicked
id - referring to content ID of the parent function - a content (i.e. Topic ID, Challenge ID, Completion ID as required to retrieve comments)

Mentioned in a Reply