A minor github syntax usage that should become part of our netiquette...

Dear all,

I am just conveying the experience we had recently in the JSON-LD WG when making comments on github.

One of the nice features of github that I can write @iherman or @msporny into the comment, and github will automatically turn these into links to my. or Manu's, github account page. Even more importantly, github may also send a mail (depending on one's setting) pinging me, resp. Manu, of the fact that we were "mentioned" in a comment.

That is great and helpful. However, this also means that if the comment itself contains such a term, like @context, github will not know that this is not meant to be a mention but simply part of the comment. For example, it so happens that https://github.com/context <https://github.com/context> is the github account of a real person, meaning that this person has possibly received a series of pings as a result of our discussion on issue 128[1]:-( We did have this experience in the JSON-LD WG where, as you might expect, such terms were abound, and we received angry mails and comments from those person (and rightfully so…)

Solution: we should take the habit to use these terms as codes as follow: `@context`. In markdown this is equivalent to <code> in HTML and, most importantly, github will ignore those characters and will not bother anyone…

Thanks

Ivan


[1] https://github.com/w3c/did-core/issues/128

 

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Ivan Herman, W3C 
Home: http://www.w3.org/People/Ivan/
mobile: +31-641044153
ORCID ID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0782-2704