[Arthur McGowan]

And I still don’t know how a “ping” works. I mean, I don’t know what it accomplishes to post the word “ping.”

[don-o]

It’s not the word “ping”. It’s the “To” field that then causes your “new posts to you” to light up so you know either

1. Someone has replied to a post you made

or

2. Someone wants you to read a post.

[Disambiguator]

And I still don’t know how a “ping” works. I mean, I don’t know what it accomplishes to post the word “ping.”

It could be misconstrued as a come-on. After all, in the IP stack, the PING utility is an acronym that means "Packet InterNet Groper."

/sarc (but correct technical information)