Platform: website Browser, : Chrome URLs (aka web addresses) of any relevant observations or pages: gazillion. Bug report prompted by a busy scientist who has tripped over this twice in my current 20 notifications. (I have @mentioned the intended iNatter for them) Screenshots of what you are see…

and that is why the identifier you asked … never responds. The answer is IN the Fail Whale.

Ok - looks like you already edited the topic title yourself

This is not a bug, this is how @ mentions have always worked in iNat. When an @ mention is saved, a notification is generated for the account that matches the text string after the @ symbol. And the @ mention is turned into a URL includes that text string. That’s it. The @ mention is not tied to a s…

@segdesrock does not match an account – it remains grey here in the forum too. She uses sedgesrock as in – sedges rock. @sedgesrock but the forum does not recognise that ? https://www.inaturalist.org/people/sedgesrock

Keep in mind that the forum is not part of iNaturalist at all, it’s run on software and servers by discourse.org . And @ mentions here work differently than they do on iNat itself. Because they are two totally different platforms.

So my first screenshot, of an obs, where seGDesrock is blue, is a deceptive error on iNat’s part. That blue link is NOT an effective link to a valid iNat profile. It should be greyed out. We should not have to click first, and THEN realise there was an initial typo. How many @mentions scattered acr…

iNat knows it is a broken link [image]

@mention broken links are blue on open obs

Bug Reports

DianaStuder August 19, 2026, 5:35am 5

Also an earlier thread
https://forum.inaturalist.org/t/make-it-easier-to-mention-users-in-comments/9350

Topic		Replies	Views
Make it easier to @-mention relevant users in comments Feature Requests web , mobile-app	32	2594	September 2, 2026
Broken links to user profiles Bug Reports web	13	1018	March 26, 2020
Getting notifications for @ mentions when I was not mentioned Bug Reports	9	265	April 17, 2025
URLs in observation discussion link to an iNat-user named 'URL' Bug Reports web	4	449	February 2, 2021
Links on observations not working Bug Reports	4	89	March 23, 2026

@mention broken links are blue on open obs

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