litphoria

I'd like to suggest an automatic feature on profiles in that they'll always show when they were created, last edited, and when the character has been last active on the chat (could be simply determined by last log-in).

That way, you'd see how active a character is and how good are your chances to meet them anytime soon.

Oh! And a display whether the profile you're currently looking at is on the chat ATM.

But it does make a huge difference if you prefer to talk to people live rather than do a delayed penmateship via notes, a distinction that also goes for this site. And as said, if I come upon an interesting profile, I'd like to know how likely it is for the character to show up so I can actually talk to them.

Me being in a particular channel right now has nothing to do with whether we're going to be communicating live or asynchronously once you PM me.

It does mean something for whether I'd be likely to respond quite soon. But then, if I don't respond in 15 minutes I'll get an email notifying me of your PM, so even if I haven't been online in the last hour or so, I could be online pretty soon. This has happened for me regularly and prompted me to come online to respond.

I didn't mean that the proposed feature would tell you WHAT CHANNEL the character is on, just that they're signed on. As said, it can make a huge difference in whether you'd approach somebody or not. If the character was made years ago and never showed up after that, it's not much use sending them a PM or note, and that's what the feature would tell you.

Yes, I know, I'm responding to this bit at the end:

Oh! And a display whether the profile you're currently looking at is on the chat ATM.

I'm well aware this is just an "are they in a channel somewhere?" indicator and not a "which one?" indicator. This bit isn't meaningful to know, even for the reasons you gave.

An "online recently" indicator is meaningful though, and exists as a friends-only feature, and it tells you when someone's been active anywhere on the site recently - regardless of whether they were in a channel or not.

To the "last active" date, a suggestion was made about that around this time last year (it was rejected): i suggest adding a day and time last on line listing for the recent listing on profiles (litphoria.com)

I don't think anyone's suggested creation date but that alone without an activity indicator would probably be bad.

I don't really like this sort of stuff. The benefit seems to be "people don't have to waste as much time messaging people that have left", and the price paid for that is to encourage minor stalking-like behaviour. If this information exists, it sends a message that it's there for a reason and will be used - and mostly not for "still around?" checking. For example, matching online times uncovers alts, the time existing encourages people to repeatedly check it to see if someone they're talking to has been around (and creates disappointment when they have been around and not replied). Maybe it's okay to build it into search, but that still makes it abusable, just lowers the incidence of it being abused.

Also yeah, "on the chat at the moment" seems meaningless. Maybe let friends of a character see a list of which chats the character is in. Friending someone doesn't do so much at the moment. Wouldn't call this a high priority.

Oh yeah, WA said the same thing in the linked thread.

What is the need/use for seeing creation date of a profile?

If you send someone a message, they will get an e-mail if they're not around and haven't checked the site recently. I can pretty reliably get notifications for messages even when I haven't been on the site on hours, and come on immediately after that to respond to folks who need my attention.

This, in turn, makes the online time kind of not really meaningful. This site is one that is attempting to bridge the gap between forums and live, chat-style RP, and part of that is letting go of the idea that someone needs to be online right at this exact moment for them to see your messages, like you do on IMs or chat services.