Ping someone with their first name

[Samat]

If I want to ping somebody, I can use the at sign, then I can choose the registered names. But if I would like to use the more friendly first name or any nickname we usually use between us (especially with people I know personally), I cannot ping it (so I need to use Daz_MFd instead, or in many case a more formal full name).

Is there a way to use different characters to show than the username, while pinging?

[ELappen_WMF]

As far as I know, in Discourse pings (or “mentions”) can only display the person’s username. You can find a user by starting to type in their entered full name as well, but the ping/mention will autocomplete with their username.

If there is interest in this, we can look into modifying.