Hello everyone. Especially hello to the lurkers, as this will affect you the most.
An edit has been made to the database to reset the "Show others my online status" option for all members, removing your previous invisibility setting. While you are more than welcome to uncheck that option within your profile, I want to take a moment to explain a few things. First, I want to point out that your actions while browsing cannot be seen to visitors who are not logged in. The only thing that can be seen is the "Users Online" information, which shows all users who have been active on the site during the defined time. Visitors cannot see the names of the "Users Logged In Today" section.
Additionally, to better disuade potential stalking and harassment by other members (though such incidents have been infrequent and rare over the years) there are two more changes that have been made. The first is that the Users Online threshold has been reduced from 30 minutes to 20 minutes. This means your footprint on the website will show for a shorter period of time. The other is that the list of "Users Logged In Today" will be shown in alphabetical order going forward, instead of in decending timestamp order.
As a community site, I believe that it's very important to have members willing to be seen, and willing to interact with each other in positive ways. When many users decide to enable their invisibility, the site begins to feel like a ghost town, and the effect tends to multiply. In order to set everyone back to an equal position, the decision was made to reset the current status of that setting, so that everyone can start fresh. I've made many tweaks to the website for this upgrade to encourage stronger community bonds and more convenient interaction with each other.
Let's continue to grow as a group, and be involved without worries! Thank you for reading, and I hope you will continue to remain visible.
-FS
