add @ to profile display of handle

[wakest]

in the profile it shows usernames at [email protected] but then when you click copy it adds an @ before it. and you need an @ to use it anywhere so it seems weird not to show it.

in the ... menu it lists the handle in the double @@ form (in what I would consider the correct way)

I know this is a touchy subject that many people have strong feelings about, so mostly just opening this issue to discuss the reasons behind the choice either way. I would say it should be normalized across Phanpy regardless of the decision

[cheeaun]

Converted this to a discussion.

Relevant links

• https://mastodon.social/@cheeaun/112099567913409079
  • Related input on initial '@' from Blaine (founding engineer of Twitter) https://mastodon.social/@blaine/112100691575688060
• https://blog.joinmastodon.org/2024/02/mastodon-for-android-update/

My thoughts/research

• Initial '@' is kinda syntactical or a visual hint
  • Has become a norm thanks to Twitter and widely used in every single social media (and chat) platforms.
  • Early designs of Twitter did not show '@' except for mentions https://twirpz.wordpress.com/2015/06/03/the-history-of-twitter-in-profile-pages-2006-to-2015/
    • It's functional, to at-mention someone, not part of a username
    • It uses more '@' when the newer designs start showing account display names beside the username (Your name @username), which I suspect the designers were using '@' to visually differentiate names from usernames.
  • The only current social networks that I'm aware of that don't show '@' is Instagram and Threads.
    • This is probably due to their UI not showing display names in the timeline. Instead of Your name @username, they show just username.
    • This is interesting because no one's complaining and people still know how to at-mention.
• As of now (March-April 2024), Phanpy experimentally removed initial '@' from remote accounts (username@domain instead of @username@domain). Local accounts will still have initial '@' (@username - without domain)
  • Mastodon has this "convention" that if it's local instance, show @cheeaun. If remote, show @[email protected]. This also applies to at-mentions when composing posts, which I think is quite confusing especially for beginners. If you're on mastodon.social, just typing @cheeaun will automagically refer to @[email protected] instead of @[email protected].
  • Mammoth (iOS) app does this too.

Other relevant(?) discussions

• Lemmy uses exclamation mark (!community@domain) https://lemmy.eus/comment/116730
  • and possibly other characters? 🫠 Instance agnostic links LemmyNet/lemmy#2987
• Threads implement "hashtags" without hash https://techcrunch.com/2023/11/15/threads-starts-testing-hashtags-without-the-hash/

[shadowwwind]

Removing the @ makes it confusing as it could be an email address as well. I like the @.