Forum feature request : User Online Status Highlighting

I just noticed, in the old forum you used to be able to instantly know if a user is online or not by just looking at his name/avatar where there is a green button at the corner indicating he or she is online. In this new “upgraded” forum, its gone, and you can’t tell if a user is online or not unless you go into his profile.

So, Aurore, could you please bring this feature back?

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I’ve seen and been a part of quite a lot of Forums using Xenforo and none of them have the “online indicator”. But it’d be pretty cool to have it, I suppose.

+1

+2

No need for a +1. The new forum has a like button :wink:

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Mr. Les Grossman, it’s because we’re all hiding from you. :smile:

What’s the benefit of knowing if someone’s online? I ask because I can’t say it’s something I’ve ever cared or thought about.

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It just comes in handy for stalking people. :eyes:

It just make it easier to know if the user you want to get in contact with is online right now, and be able to reply to you quickly. This is especially handy for support issues.

More the reason not to :smile:

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I’m not against the idea but I agree with @angrypenguin I don’t get the benefit.

P.s. I did get your PM about this, I’ve just been swamped lately.

Or to stalk people :wink:

I don’t really understand it either. Is it just for stalking or is it some sort of emotional thing like getting feel the people are “more here”?

With the old forum is was good. You could see if there was a chance to get a quick reply or other guy to see your post before thread gets buried to other pages. Not sure how needed it now as the thread watch and alert system works well.

Darn right! Then +1 to hit that like button! :hushed::smile:

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That’s why I don’t see the point. Whether someone is “online” or not probably has a small chance of effecting how quickly they’ll reply, and if they’ve opted in there’s a whole bunch of stuff to inform them even if they’re not online. But also, this is a forum, not an IM system… if you want a quick reply from a specific person there’s appropriate tools for that (handily also built in).

Plus, those “online” markers are nebulous at best. Don’t they really just mean that someone’s clicked a link in the last N minutes?

Anyway, I don’t really have anything against the idea. I just thought I might be missing something about what it’s useful for.

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Yes but for me it was/is something that I was used to on other forums and old forum. The old subscribe system was crap to use so while working with other things I usually stayed a while on one thread after replying if I saw that the other guys active in the thread were online. It didn’t increase the chance to get a reply but increased the chance I actually saw the reply before wandering to other forum sections ;). This was just one example how I personally used it.

But like I said that with the new forum I don’t need it cause the watch/alert system is great. I wouldn’t mind if it was on here since if someone is scared of Mr. Les Grossman, they can turn it off in the options.

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What if you want to communicate with someone, but you don’t have their A) email address, B) any social media contact for them, or C) some non-Unity-Forums means of communication with said person? In that case, the Unity Forum, more specifically private messaging, is the only means of contact.

Is it a good idea for this to be the case? I would say ‘no’ for 99% of cases, but there is room for benevolent exceptions.

TL;DR - It’s an ‘edgy’ edge case.

People don’t need to be online in order to send them PMs, though, so I’m not quite sure how that’s related.

–Eric

“I know what you did on the forums last summer” MWAHAAHHA!

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