Active User Status?

Actually, considering the unpredictability of people's online usage, I think this would be a great idea!

That is a great idea! I have read so many threads and discussions about reviews,etc. from the not here anymore contributors, it gets a bit daunting!!

I'm glad to hear I'm not the only one that would find this type of feature helpful!

I'm in favor of this idea!

I think this is a great idea. This would be really helpful for when someone has a question about an older review.

Would this be an automatic thing (ie. the user hasn't logged in for a certain period of time) or something that people set themselves? Because if they're inactive, few people would set it themselves. And if it's automatic it's not a whole lot different than the Last Logged In thing.

I'm not saying it's a bad idea. I actually agree that it's a good idea. I'm just curious about how it would work.

I think we actually have one, but nobody uses it really. On your profile page (center tab, where you see your 'about me' section) there's a place where you can write a 50-character status, and mark yourself 'active' or 'inactive.'

Seems like when people stop being active, though, it's not really an active choice, the just stop logging in. So maybe the voluntary way isn't very useful.

That's the thing, I'm really not sure what would be the best way to implement something like this. I have noticed the "Active" option on the About Me page, but I haven't been able to figure out where/how this is reflected on a contributor's profile. Plus you're totally right that when people go inactive it's usually not an active choice. I myself had been away from EF for about 2 years up until just a month or so ago; I never planned on being away for as long as I was. So definitely not everyone who becomes inactive is going to set themselves as inactive. Perhaps it could be set up so that if a user doesn't log in for a certain amount of time it'll show them as inactive or even "Inactive Since -X Month-" or something to that effect? But then the question is, how much time before someone is considered inactive? Definitely something to think about, just wanted to get a feel for whether or not anyone else would be interested in a feature like this as well as find out if it would even be possible.

Alright, I finally figured out what the "Active" and "Not Active" options actually do when you change them (next to your status). Although, again, it won't help unless someone goes in and changes it. I changed it on my profile to see what would happen, and the little green text bubble next to your status will turn gray to show you as not active. I'd still be very interested in some sort of system that reflects a users active status when a user becomes inactive after a while. Especially users that have been gone for quite some time, since before the status and "Active"/"Not Active" options were implemented.