Odd? LJ habit. Why?

[jbsegal]

So, I understand why you would want to link ( <lj-user=foo>) to a user if you were discussing something related to them, but why do folks feel it's necessary to do it every time they say someone else's name in the course of a post? I might even be able to understand it if you did it the 1st time, but then why every time thereafter in the same post?

So..many of you do it. Why?

Comments

[geekosaur]

I've wondered about that myself... I tend to go for the "link on first reference" method.

[thespian.livejournal.com]

heck, I barely remember to do it the first time, which I always intend to do.

[crs.livejournal.com]

In as concise terms as possible, for consistency's sake.

[roadnotes.livejournal.com]

Consistency, I would guess. I've just remembered/figured out how to do it the first time, and probably won't keep doing it. (What can I say? I'm mean: if you want to find out whether the person I'm talking about is on LiveJournal, you can make the extra keystrokes and look for yourself.) (Or I'm lazy. Your choice.)

[awfief.livejournal.com]

I like to point out to mycroft how much I talk about him in my lj. The bold colorful references help that. :)

seriously, though, as Chris said -- consistency. Also, not everyone's username is their preferred name. The only people that call me "awfief" are my brothers, and I like to keep it that way. To the rest of the world, "awfief" is a handle, not a nickname. When it appears in plain text, without quotes around it, or without an @domain afterwards, I feel like they're calling me "awfief" which I actually quite rather hate.

I would never call my friends pheromone, hammercock, mangosteen, kb17, cthulhia, lyonesse, etc. I'd call them by their real names. So putting names like jbsegal in print like I just did, without quotes, whatever, just feels weird.

[crs.livejournal.com]

Excellent point. Either you have to assume the reader can connect "jbsegal" with that person who is later on referred to as "Bait," or you have to do something like parentheses or something... But referring to awfief or jbsegal without the <lj ...> surrounding it seems wrong.

[rmd.livejournal.com]

it depends. i occasionally put it "link on first usage", but i rarely even do that. i don't get the "all links all the time" thing.