Those are good ideas, and could be adapted for my use case! Especially because Dreamwidth already has the notion of various circles of access. You could totally use existing circles, and have it be: notify me when
anyone uses my username
anyone in any of my circles does
anyone in these access circles does
And then just like you can sign up on each post "notify me of new comments in this post", you could add "notify me if someone uses my username in this post".
And then if you want to be sure people aren't notified, just don't use the username tag, instead just type their username.
I don't think you are misunderstanding. Dreamwidth folks are generally much more private than many of the other social media sites, but the general cases still apply.
(If Twitter and Tumblr are a whole bunch of people crowded into a huge banquet hall where some people are finding friends and some are shouting at each other and some are holding up signs that say #MARVELFANS and some are pointing out all of the other people, Dreamwidth is more a whole lot of people who are holding open houses in their own living rooms, inviting folks in to chat about interesting things, and renting out little public halls to host our communities. Er, that metaphor got away with me. But that's why we're more careful about concepts like notifying people if you say their name. We're missing a lot of the tools that make it easier to find people, but that also make it easier to harass people.)
Re: Thoughts on "someone is talking about you"
- anyone uses my username
- anyone in any of my circles does
- anyone in these access circles does
And then just like you can sign up on each post "notify me of new comments in this post", you could add "notify me if someone uses my username in this post".And then if you want to be sure people aren't notified, just don't use the username tag, instead just type their username.
I don't think you are misunderstanding. Dreamwidth folks are generally much more private than many of the other social media sites, but the general cases still apply.
(If Twitter and Tumblr are a whole bunch of people crowded into a huge banquet hall where some people are finding friends and some are shouting at each other and some are holding up signs that say #MARVELFANS and some are pointing out all of the other people, Dreamwidth is more a whole lot of people who are holding open houses in their own living rooms, inviting folks in to chat about interesting things, and renting out little public halls to host our communities. Er, that metaphor got away with me. But that's why we're more careful about concepts like notifying people if you say their name. We're missing a lot of the tools that make it easier to find people, but that also make it easier to harass people.)