Don't you think that it is a good idea to add a reply button to comments to questions and answers? Most people forget to type @username when replying which makes the person who made the previous comment miss the reply and miss the chance to help that person.
There is a user script for this already. See the stackapps post.
This is the story of a time long ago, a time of myth and legend, when Jeff Atwood ruled Stack Exchange. He status-declined Add "Reply" link to comment that pre-populates comment box with @username.
But! Since it was declined so long ago, and the company has changed considerably since then, it might worth asking for an escalation (see Community and Moderator guidelines for escalating issues via new response process (March-April 2020)).
The only real disadvantage I can think of to a properly designed reply button is that it might lead to more replying, encouraging protracted conversations in comments.
The original arguments against a reply button were mostly that it would result in the @ notation used unnecessarily, in places where users wouldn't otherwise use it. But in addition to having lots of comments that intend but don't achieve a notification, we also have numerous comments that already use this notation unnecessarily, sometimes unintentionally. Both these problems can be solved together, with a reply button.
Instead of the reply button simply adding an @ mention for the user no matter what, it should:
@ mention if doing so causes the user to be notified when they otherwise wouldn'tThat would result in fewer unnecessary @ mentions, not more, if people use the reply button instead of writing the @ mentions manually.
The problem that people often think they're notifying someone when they're not is much more severe than the problem of extra noise that Jeff Atwood talked about. But a reply button needn't be a trade-off between them. It can mitigate both.
Note that it sometimes does make sense to use @username when addressing a post author and in other scenarios where it is not needed. The purpose of code is not just to make computers behave a certain way, but also to make meaning clear to humans. This is still not the same as just writing their name; using the @ notation expresses an intent to notify them.
For example, when replying to a comment by a post author when there has been at least one other commenter, I almost always use that notation, so that it is clear to them that they're not just being notified incidentally to the comment being on their post.
But this feature needn't prevent me from writing such notation manually, as I currently do.
About Jeff Atwood's answer,
AXIOM: A bunch of comments filled with
@usernameare harder to read and noisier than those which are not. The goal of our sites is to increase signal-to-noise, not reduce it.The average number of comments on a SO question is 2.5.
The median number of comments on a SO question is ZERO.
Post owners are always notified of comments on their posts.
If there are only two people talking in comments, the post owner and one other person, we auto-infer replies in that situation as well; that is:
Question? -- User A
Clarifying comment. -- User B
Response to clarifying comment. -- User AIn the above case, A would be notified of B's comment. And B would be notified of A's response to his comment as well. Notice the conspicuous lack of
@usernameanywhere!If the average number of comments is 2.5 -- let's go nucking futs here and assume one of those is a reply from the post owner back to the person who left the comment -- then statistically speaking, @username is not required at all.
Based on our current roadmap, this isn't work that we will take on, as it doesn't coincide with functional areas that we plan to improve in the near future. We recognize that there's community support for this, but unfortunately, we can't prioritize it at this time.