# Any way to search for \*mentions\* of your username distinguished from your own posts? **URL:** \ **Category:** Site Feedback\ **Created:** [April 8, 2025, 5:00am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/any-way-to-search-for-mentions-of-your-username-distinguished-from-your-own-posts/1016777 "2025-04-08T05:00:36Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 13\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![AHunter3](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ahunter3/32/368_2.png) [@AHunter3](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AHunter3)\ **Post date:** [April 8, 2025, 5:00am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/any-way-to-search-for-mentions-of-your-username-distinguished-from-your-own-posts/1016777/1 "2025-04-08T05:00:36Z")
In the vBulletin days I could search for “AHunter3” and it would not return all of my own posts as matches or if I remember correctly) even replies to me. So the search results would consist of times people had mentioned me. Is there a way to perform that kind of search in Discourse? ---
**Author:** ![ParallelLines](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/parallellines/32/3575_2.png) [@ParallelLines](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ParallelLines)\ **Post date:** [April 8, 2025, 5:16am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/any-way-to-search-for-mentions-of-your-username-distinguished-from-your-own-posts/1016777/2 "2025-04-08T05:16:28Z")
I may be misunderstanding, but if I do a search by my name for example, under the “advanced search option” and topics and posts, it returned all the times my name had shown up, including anytime it was someone quoting my posts, but didn’t include posts BY me, unless I quoted myself in such. Just in case you use different terms, I clicked on the search icon (Magnifying glass) and to the right side of the search box there’s an icon that looks something like an equalizer, which pulls up the advanced options. You can type any poster’s name in the search field, leave it on the default “Topics/Posts” and search away. [https://boards.straightdope.com/search?q=Ahunter3%20order%3Alatest](https://boards.straightdope.com/search?q=Ahunter3%20order%3Alatest) This is my results for your name by doing the above. Was this more or less what you were looking for? I mean, yes, it would still include replies to you if you were quoted at all, so not a perfect match if I understood you correctly, but should be close I hope. ---
**Author:** ![Reply](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/reply/32/15952_2.png) [@Reply](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Reply)\ **Post date:** [April 8, 2025, 6:10am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/any-way-to-search-for-mentions-of-your-username-distinguished-from-your-own-posts/1016777/3 "2025-04-08T06:10:30Z")
Discourse has a special page for this: [https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AHunter3/notifications/mentions](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AHunter3/notifications/mentions) (that will only work for AHunter3 and will 404 for everyone else unless you change the username) It’s a bit harder to access manually: - Click your avatar - On the list of notifications to the left, click the down arrow at the bottom - You should now be in the Notifications screen. Click the `@ Mentions` tab in the second row. ---
**Author:** ![Reply](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/reply/32/15952_2.png) [@Reply](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Reply)\ **Post date:** [April 8, 2025, 6:37am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/any-way-to-search-for-mentions-of-your-username-distinguished-from-your-own-posts/1016777/4 "2025-04-08T06:37:51Z")
You can also search for `" @AHunter3 "` (in quotes, with spaces): [https://boards.straightdope.com/search?q=%22%20%40AHunter3%20%22%20order%3Alatest](https://boards.straightdope.com/search?q=%22%20%40AHunter3%20%22%20order%3Alatest) From the official Discourse docs: [Example: Searching for @mentions](https://meta.discourse.org/t/searching-for-content-effectively/273328#example-searching-for-mentions-5) ---
**Author:** ![Cervaise](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/cervaise/32/16693_2.png) [@Cervaise](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cervaise)\ **Post date:** [April 8, 2025, 6:42am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/any-way-to-search-for-mentions-of-your-username-distinguished-from-your-own-posts/1016777/5 "2025-04-08T06:42:36Z")
I just did some testing. When you search on your exact username, Discourse tries to be “helpful” as you say, recognizing it as your handle and including your activity. But when I search for a partial-but-still-unique version of my username (Cervais, missing the final E), I get all the in-text mentions (including the ones that are just text, without being @'d), but the system doesn’t associate it with my handle, so I don’t get any activity. Could be worth trying, as another approach if you don’t like the above. ---
**Author:** ![Reply](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/reply/32/15952_2.png) [@Reply](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Reply)\ **Post date:** [April 8, 2025, 6:46am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/any-way-to-search-for-mentions-of-your-username-distinguished-from-your-own-posts/1016777/6 "2025-04-08T06:46:56Z")
> [@Cervaise](#): > > When you search on your exact username, Discourse tries to be “helpful” as you say, recognizing it as your handle and including your activity. Guess that works for those of us with less… stupid… usernames 😅 I just get a bunch of, well, _replies_… sigh. ---
**Author:** ![Cervaise](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/cervaise/32/16693_2.png) [@Cervaise](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cervaise)\ **Post date:** [April 8, 2025, 6:49am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/any-way-to-search-for-mentions-of-your-username-distinguished-from-your-own-posts/1016777/7 "2025-04-08T06:49:53Z")
Heh. This was a major contributor to my choice to use a non-common word as my handle, lo these many decades ago. ---
**Author:** ![Reply](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/reply/32/15952_2.png) [@Reply](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Reply)\ **Post date:** [April 8, 2025, 6:57am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/any-way-to-search-for-mentions-of-your-username-distinguished-from-your-own-posts/1016777/8 "2025-04-08T06:57:25Z")
I joined when I was a teenager and thought I was being _so clever_! That was also the time period my email address was “[username@ibm.net](mailto:username@ibm.net)”. Apparently the internet will send you no small amount of spam and test emails when you pick a dumb username like that. Whoda thunk? It confused a couple sysadmins though, so it was all worth it 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![Cervaise](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/cervaise/32/16693_2.png) [@Cervaise](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cervaise)\ **Post date:** [April 8, 2025, 8:27am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/any-way-to-search-for-mentions-of-your-username-distinguished-from-your-own-posts/1016777/9 "2025-04-08T08:27:31Z")
LOL. Username = “username.” I can see how that would produce ten minutes of clever pride followed by ten years of “what was I thinking?” ---
**Author:** ![engineer\_comp\_geek](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/engineer_comp_geek/32/504_2.png) [@engineer\_comp\_geek](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/engineer_comp_geek)\ **Post date:** [April 8, 2025, 1:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/any-way-to-search-for-mentions-of-your-username-distinguished-from-your-own-posts/1016777/10 "2025-04-08T13:30:33Z")
Since this is about Discourse’s software, let’s move this to Site Feedback (from ATMB). ---
**Author:** ![AHunter3](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ahunter3/32/368_2.png) [@AHunter3](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AHunter3)\ **Post date:** [April 8, 2025, 8:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/any-way-to-search-for-mentions-of-your-username-distinguished-from-your-own-posts/1016777/11 "2025-04-08T20:07:14Z")
> [@Reply](#): > > Discourse has a special page for this: > > [https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AHunter3/notifications/mentions](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AHunter3/notifications/mentions) (that will only work for AHunter3 and will 404 for everyone else unless you change the username) Oh, that’s very nice!!! - bookmarks the URL \* ---
**Author:** ![Atamasama](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/atamasama/32/12961_2.png) [@Atamasama](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Atamasama)\ **Post date:** [April 8, 2025, 8:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/any-way-to-search-for-mentions-of-your-username-distinguished-from-your-own-posts/1016777/12 "2025-04-08T20:25:01Z")
Discourse has “related” and “suggested” and “new” topics; if they really understood human nature they’d have one called “who’s talking about me”. 😜 ---
**Author:** ![LSLGuy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lslguy/32/5813_2.png) [@LSLGuy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/LSLGuy)\ **Post date:** [April 8, 2025, 8:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/any-way-to-search-for-mentions-of-your-username-distinguished-from-your-own-posts/1016777/13 "2025-04-08T20:58:46Z")
> [@Atamasama](#): > > they’d have one called “who’s talking about me”. Nope. It’d be called "who’s talking about **Meeeeeee!!1!** ”. 😉