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I'd like to correct a misconception that I keep bumping into before it becomes too widespread:

While most of the patches I've posted to date were done on a free-time/voluntary basis, theymos and I did recently come to an arrangement, and I am now paid for the work I do on Bitcointalk.

[Long time ago]

Too bad he only gets merits, and not tens of thousands of bitcoins.  :/

Oh, too bad! Enhhh, but you just don't wanna make everyone needy of learning a programming language and basic coding skills - flooding meta with every form of patches you'd ever think of - should it ever be incentived.

Voluntary contribution is very respectable, but it wouldn't hurt if theymos opened up that dusty cold storage for the most dedicated contributor.  

Maybe we could try to make a separate topic about it? "If everyone speaks in one language", Theymos may listen.
Edit:

Then periods >72 hours, it should display something like Long time ago, and perhaps Long long time ago for periods exceeding certain time like a year or more.

okk.... I have a problem with the "long long time" thing.  It looks too clumsy and may most probably not contain a single line of word on our profile.

so I wonder why the admin hasn't done it so far - because it's not something technically demanding.

Do a search on a Theymos post in Meta containing "can of worms" and you will see that he's looked into that but it's more complicated than it looks.
And if I remember correctly, I read in the Staff section that Theymos has reworked the reports page, so it's not really standard any more. (This info isn't 100% accurate, I must have read it a long time ago).
Maybe one day PowerGlove (or someone else) will come up with a patch .

After you posted this topic, several threads have been locked. I replied to or participated in the discussion on five of those threads that locked. Its better for this kind of thread to be locked rather than moved to off-topic, like a few weeks ago when some threads were posted in the gambling discussion are move to off topic board that results some of the signature participants didn't get paid because of that. (I'm not saying that because of moderator who moved the thread is the reason why some signature participants not get paid.) It's always because of the signature participants who posted on that topic.

It would be helpful if there is a feature that allows users to see who quoted them and where. Sifting through all the replies can be very time-consuming, and important interactions can easily be missed.

This already exist as you have been informed earlier, you can make use of the telegram bot for that using the link above to set for that feature, alternatively, you can also set for notify me button on each board as the case may be, you will be notified from any thread you're been quoted or a new reply is made and this goes directly to your inbox on the email address used on the forum, but most make use of the telegram bot for more features as they may want like merits, mentions, quotes and so on.

~Profile parsing did cross my mind, but what made me feel okay about it was that I noticed in the SMF code that non-datetime text was already possible for that field before this patch (the text "Never" can be displayed there, too), so I guessed that you must already have made your parser(s) robust against non-datetimes.

All good man, no apology necessary!   Should be an easy workaround (once I get my development machine in order), although with potentially ~3 days of inaccuracy. I'm not sure what you would consider a more robust way to process that field but we basically have specific conditions to deal with Never & Today, to convert them to datetime.. just not (Recently), yet..  

So if I monitor a profile that was last active more than 3 days ago, and it's status switches to "(Recently)", I know it's became active right at that moment.

Well, you know it's become active at some point between that moment, and the last time you scraped the profile.

I never took the "show online status" as being directly related to the last active date, so 72 hours feels extreme when the default session time is 1 hour for a logged in "online" user. Maybe 8-12 hours for (Recently)?  
I feel like 'Last Active' should at least be accurate to the day they were last active to prevent someone disappearing for 3 days while victims think they are active.

And then what is displayed after 3 days of inactivity?.. the day/time they were actually last active, or 72 hours after the actual last active point?

This patch is also restricted to what ranks?? Because I can't  find it  in my forum preferences while checking...I guess this is also related to the small green button

[off]
Saw a current theme preference with a change  link , is the forum also planning on doing that or it's available and still restricted  ??

@criptoevangelista Congratulation. your triple 5 merit was looking very nice. best of luck

This is nice to see and thanks to Powerglove for coming up with such idea, also to the admin for a very effective implementation on this, we now see more reason on why privacy in very more needed even on the way we appear on the forum, its not always ideal to have people predict the active time we are on the forum precisely, but being shown as recently could mean now, few hours ago or even some days after, you cannot be well predicted on your last active time now, its such a good and new development.

~snip~
I think there should be some benefit for users reporting like badges that come with some special privileges etc as it's a thankless task and it's very rare we add new mods based on their reporting so that's another lack of incentive. Maybe we could even give some small BTC prizes to some of the most active reporters etc.

The majority agreed that badges would be something that would further motivate users to be more active when it comes to using the "report to moderator" button, so I wonder why the admin hasn't done it so far - because it's not something technically demanding. However, even if this happens, it should be done in a smart way so that it does not happen that some people start making hundreds of unnecessary reports a day in order to get badges as soon as possible. Also, the limit for getting such a badge should be high, at least 5000 good reports or maybe even more than that.

As for the BTC rewards, I feel that it can be very motivating, but when it comes to money, there will always be those who will try to abuse it, even if it means that they will put their alt farms into operation, create as much spam as possible and then report themselves.