Seriously, guys. Circle. Jerked. To. Hell.

New topic, please.

<Snipped quote by Captain Jordan>

I respectfully disagree. We're holding an evolving, intelligent argument with new reasons that have not been stated before. Thus we are further enlightened on the subject and we (or Mahz) can make a more informed decision.

I'm a little late to the "discussion" but was this feature being endlessly discussed even something Mahz said he was considering? I looked back a few pages and didn't see anything of the sort.

@Lillian Thorne If memory serves correctly, then no. It was just a suggestion that this thread's regulars are split more or less right down the middle on.

pretty sure there's not much new to be added to the discussion at this point, @whizzball1. Even our last post in it was pretty much a refined phrasing of earlier posts by us and several others. All continuing it will do at this point is put hot coals under people's tempers until they do things they'll later regret.

To be honest, we can't remember.

- GMs of application-only roleplays can gatekeep users from posting IC until they are approved.

I'm not really ready to brainstorm this feature yet, but those are some ideas.

What Mahz Really Asked Our Opinion On And Everybody Side Tracked Away From [+]

I'd like to bring back the "user status" system that the Guild used to have long ago -- probably this weekend to take a break from whatever I come up with for the v1.0 search system. New forum platforms (like forums that use Xenforo) usually have this feature, and it's one of the most requested features since relaunch.

I often find it helpful myself. For example, I'd like to set my status to "Currently working on a search system" so people can see what I'm working on despite my activity in this thread.

Other examples of useful statuses:

- "I'm visiting grandma so I'll be away til mid-April" (3 days ago) -- Signal to your friends that you're away but will be coming back.
- "Currently writing post for <name of roleplay>" (12 min ago) -- Signal to your fellow players that your next post is imminent.

Statuses can be up to 140 chars.

So that people will actually read your status, I'm thinking of including it as a small button next to the "bio" button. When clicked, it can pop up a small window that shows the status with a small form that allows you to comment on it or rate it like you can a post. Perhaps the button even saturates into some color when you haven't read the user's latest status.

What do yall think? Any better ideas for how the status should be displayed on posts? It'd be possible to display the [possibly truncated] status directly on the post, but I'm reluctant to add clutter to posts.

So that people will actually read your status, I'm thinking of including it as a small button next to the "bio" button. When clicked, it can pop up a small window that shows the status with a small form that allows you to comment on it or rate it like you can a post. Perhaps the button even saturates into some color when you haven't read the user's latest status.

What do yall think? Any better ideas for how the status should be displayed on posts? It'd be possible to display the [possibly truncated] status directly on the post, but I'm reluctant to add clutter to posts.

I'd rather have it as hover-over tooltip for PC (disappears as soon as you move off the element) and tap-activated tooltip for touch-devices (goes away as soon as you tap anywhere but the button), also visible on profile above the bio; popup windows tend to be somewhat more annoying even when you can dismiss them with one button-press/tap/click. It being a popup-window rather than hover-over element will make me significantly less likely to actually ever look at those things, whereas hover-over statuses such as seen on Skype or the forum I'm thinking of below I occasionally do read them. (You can CSS-style tooltips, so appearances shouldn't be a problem.)
I've seen a quite functional forum-implementation of something very similar with the avatar working like the status not-button element described above - although the element being avatar rather than a thing with the word "status" written on it underneath the avatar tends to result in new people discovering the feature every now and then.
Uhh... But commenting and rating statuses? Don't like that thought. Far too social media gimmick for my tastes. (Whatever would even happen to these hypthetical comments and ratings whenever an user changes status - would they just get wiped with each and every edit, or would there be a graveyard of past statuses somewhere...?)