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I have an answer on which the new user who posted the question requires further help though they have accepted the answer... But it turns out I am short of some knowledge in the case.

Can I, for example, call on @Zanna to have a look at the new user's comment on my answer?

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    That won't work unless the person you ping has already interacted with the question. Best to go to chat and see if someone can help out.
    – Mark Kirby
    Nov 19, 2018 at 13:16
  • Okay, +1 for the idea of going to chat... Nevertheless, @Zanna, please, have you interacted with a similar case? Nov 19, 2018 at 13:26
  • Pinging Zanna here won't help, because they haven't been on the question yet. You need to find them in chat or drop them an in-chat ping then wait. In the interim, add the link to the question/answer/comment here.
    – Thomas Ward Mod
    Nov 19, 2018 at 14:08
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    @dessert done... I have edited and added the link to the question and answer too. Nov 19, 2018 at 14:17
  • @ThomasWard OK! Nov 19, 2018 at 14:20
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    I notified Zanna :)
    – Rinzwind
    Nov 19, 2018 at 15:09
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    does is have to be Zanna? TS made an assumption... installing inside a VM has no relation with the setup of the host OS.
    – Rinzwind
    Nov 19, 2018 at 15:13
  • @Rinzwind not necessarily, She's just one of the people I thought could be of help faster... But I have learned a few things from the interaction we have had here. Nov 19, 2018 at 21:05

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As pointed out by Mark Kirby, you can't effectively call on a particular user from a post they haven't yet commented on or edited, because an @user will not send them a notification. See this Meta Stack Exchange answer for details of when comment notifications are triggered.

If you want to seek help from high rep users*, you can always find a few lurking in Ask Ubuntu General Room (which I know you have visited before :) ). Someone will usually be willing to take a look at any problem...

If you're looking for a particular user, then, well, it depends on the user and whether they mind. I think most people won't mind being pinged in chat just to take a look at a few comments. Certainly you are (and anyone else is) welcome to ping me any time to ask my advice (I also hang out in the Downboat which is for moderation issues and the Island which is for anything at all) but there are plenty of topics I know nothing about and loads of regular users much more knowledgeable than me. I know a fair bit about how Ask Ubuntu works, not so much about other stuff (otherwise I would answer a lot more questions :/ ).

* Note that high reputation often indicates that a user has spent a lot of time here, not necessarily that they know a lot. If you take a look at people's badges and the topics they answer in, and you will get an idea of their areas of knowledge.


As regards the particular case in point, as far as I understand it, there's no way an installation in a virtual machine can see or write to any other space than that which has been allocated to it on the host. However, I've never installed Ubuntu or any other OS in a virtual machine so I don't have any experience to help the OP of that question, sorry :(

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