It's been five years since Discord added a reply feature, which will send a notification to the user in question. This has made a lot of people very angry and has widely been considered a bad move.
No, but really, I'd really appreciate it if people defaulted to not ping replying me. I've had this discussion a few times in a few different circles, so I'm writing this down here so I can link to it whenever the topic comes up again in the future.
tl;dr: Treat pinging me (by any means) like physically tapping me on the shoulder. That is about how much it will distract me, so that is how intentional it should feel. Remember that pressing shift-click on the reply button will automatically default to not pinging.
Why?
I keep my notifications pretty minimal by design. I take being pinged pretty seriously: it plays a noise on my computer and buzzes my phone/watch, and even if I don't stop what I'm doing right now to check, it's a sign that there's something that requires my attention the next time I have a free moment.
This is fine, in general. This is, after all, what notification systems are designed to do. DMs from friends, a response to a question I've asked or requests for moderator assistance are both perfectly fine reasons to alert me.
What I don't like is when someone ping-replies me after three hours to point out some random errata or add their opinion to a conversation that is long over.
The problem with Discord's replies pinging by defualt is that it conflates two tangential purposes:
- This is the specific message you're responding to (very useful in large chat rooms).
- It is important for me know that you responded.
The first is great. The second is not.
This is especially relevant in channels for projects I maintain, which I already check regularly. By pinging me over something trivial (especially on servers where "turn off ping reply" is in my username), you've essentially guaranteed that I will be rejoining the conversation from a place of annoyance.
Exceptions
Firstly, accidents happen, especially since Discord refuses to allow us to set the default, it's not the end of the world.
That said, here are the situations where reply-pinging me is appropriate:
- If I've asked a question and you're answering it after I've gone offline.
- If it's genuinely important that I see it sooner rather than later.
- If we're friends. I am way less irritated by being interrupted for something stupid by someone who, by definition, I already talk to regularly.
But most of the time? A plain reply is enough.