I'm not a newbie but I was gone for some time, and now that I'm back, there seems to be a few changes.

So, at the risk of sounding like a complete n00b, how exactly does one ping someone?

You just put the @ symbol before their name without any spaces. :)

You just put a @ followed by their username, no spaces. They will get an event over at the side telling them they've been mentioned on the thread.

Thanx, I hope that worked.

No problem! It worked. :)