I doubt I'm the only one that thinks this is a good design feature at this point.

I second this.

Yes please. Thirded.

Hear hear!

rofl

Would be very nice.

This would be awesome, as shown by the shit going on in the status bar. I got pressured into joining an Internet gang.

Is the thing really even that 'in people's faces' to begin with? I mean, I generally don't even notice it unless I deliberately read it.

With that in mind, I think this site has far bigger priorities in terms of updates.

@Shoryu Magami. Given the layout of the site, and how everything is neatly piled up on the right hand side of the screen, it's kind of hard to ignore. Everything from Friends to New Roleplays to New Interest Checks, and the like are there, and right in the middle of it, is the status updates. What might fix things is a simple rearrangement so that the statuses are the very bottom of the list.

You have it. To access the feature, you may avert your eyes.

@JDolan

Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying the option to make a simple rearrangement is a bad idea or something, nor am I saying it'd be a good idea to have an option to hide the feature (given how immature a lot of the people using it are). I just think making the feature more difficult to notice - when simply not paying attention to it works for myself and other people (for the most part, anyway) - takes lower priority than fixing a lot of the other incomplete or flawed gimmicks this site has. There's also other features the site's missing outright.

Given the layout of the site, and how everything is neatly piled up on the right hand side of the screen, it's kind of hard to ignore. Everything from Friends to New Roleplays to New Interest Checks, and the like are there, and right in the middle of it, is the status updates. What might fix things is a simple rearrangement so that the statuses are the very bottom of the list.

This is also a workaround that I think mahz and the mod team should consider-- especially if it is in fact easier than the initial suggestion.

Per discussions a while back (2 years ago, after Guildfall), I know that mahz was contemplating the idea of an opt out feature for things on the site, so it's hard to say if the opt-out fact workable on the back end as it might sound at first.

Or those who choose to use the status bar as a place for spam could just post in spam.

To be fair though, some of the people who use the status bar are worse than a lot of the people in spam.

I think the problem has less to do with an issue with the feature itself or its visibility, and far more to do with there not being enough active effort on the part of the staff to get rid of or deal with the toxic people here. I've actually been considering leaving this site permanently for months now, mostly because of how disappointing I consider this specific problem on the site in a general sense.

Really, the overarching rules of this site only apply to people posting in the threads and PM system (and even then only if problems are reported, if at all), because generally speaking it seems like very little is done outside of those things to keep trolls or other idiots from giving people a hard time or generally being assholes to total strangers for no reason other than what I presume to be their need to compensate.

The feature itself has a lot of useful applications, so it's more a problem with the community itself. Granted, the exact same applications of the status bar could actually be replaced by including a 'user status' thread and/or forum alongside the introduction area - where people could post if they need to leave the site for a while (my old forums I created had such a feature, but overall they were a far more civil community than this one is) - but then people should be keeping people up to date on their presence in their respective threads anyway.

Mahz explicitly said not to abuse each of the systems on this site; in fact, it's blatantly included as a note directly in each feature, but it seems people can just ignore that without consequence here for the most part. Like I said, the only places that people have to be civil or they get punished are the actual main threads, and I'm quite confident that if those were all that existed on this site then you'd very quickly see most of the idiots here leave. I'm not suggesting the other features be removed, but it just shows this place isn't managed well.

I doubt I'm the only one that thinks this is a good design feature at this point.

I don’t particularly agree that this is a good design feature. In terms of modern standards of message boards, the status bar existing to promote community and communication on the right-hand side of the website is pretty much a good feature. The problem lies in not the utility of the status bar nor its existence but rather the people who choose to abuse it to harass others or spam the page. I understand that the issue with the abuse of the system is a relevant concern, of course, but the fact that people want to hide the status bar is a big issue that the moderation staff might have to address sooner rather than later.