Inside the Little Plastic Castle

Hooray for an easier way to make usernames appear here! Simply type
@username
and you’ll get the right user head:

for people:
@jesse_the_k becomes jesse_the_k

for communities:
@access_fandom becomes access_fandom

for official communities:
@dw-nifty becomes dw_nifty

@ Shortcut for other sites

The @ trick also works with the two dozen external sitenames DW supports: use @username period sitename

@dreamwidth.twitter becomes dreamwidth
@dreamwidth.github becomes dreamwidth

These shortcuts work almost everywhere in Dreamwidth, posting or commenting

• in email posts and replies
• the HTML editor, whether you
  • just type text (also known as "casual HTML")
  • or use Markdown

EXCEPT they don't work when you're take full control of the HTML reins (also known as "raw HTML" or "don't autoformat")

The @ shortcuts are faster and easier than the HTML versions, which do still work:

<user name=username>
<user name=username site=sitename>

Dreamwidth’s @ shortcuts are format, not communication

On Twitter, @ with a username is a verb — @user’s "mentions" notify @user every time it appears. This convention has spread widely to Discord, Github, Tumblr, Facebook and elsewhere.

That’s not true here. On Dreamwidth, @ shortcuts only show a link to the user’s account

The @ shortcuts even affect old Dreamwidth posts. When I wrote about @jesse_the_k to mean "Jesse on Twitter" back in 2010, now that will show a Dreamwidth userhead.

Bypassing the @ Shortcut

Dreamwidth makes any characters right after an @ sign into a username. To make the @ sign simply display

• precede the @ with backslash:
  \@WordNextToAtSign
• in HTML, use the character reference @

ETA BUG ALERT never mind, they fixed the bug!