Small improvement regarding activity / "Show others your online status"

[BitcoinGirl.Club]

Staff position is possible but a global moderator position will need much time for PowerGlove to achieve. Being a technical member with good contribution for the forum is big advantage but theymos will need more time to actually trust PowerGlove and appoint global moderator position to the coder.

Being a good programmer doesn't make you a good moderator. Let's not get carried away here.

+1
I was not talking about having a staff position. I was talking about to gain financial benefit of the time and talent invested. I could be wrong but right now it seems earning a good forum reputation but once it is achieved he will have no motivation to continue contribution. A hobby does not stay for long time but when a hobby turns into a profession then it become a career.

[Smartvirus]

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

The new forum software is in the line for a decade, we actually do not know how it's going, how much funds we are spending, what is the progress, will it even become a thing in the near future or it was just a failed project. We know nothing.

I haven’t been here for a decade and so I wouldn’t know or I simply don’t care very much. After all, the forum haven’t been so buggy but, an improved version of what it is today wouldn’t be undesirable, whatever that is and I don’t think it’s another launch into space to take much time.

I do not think PowerGlove is the only one who is doing the Voluntary job [if it is], there are many with us who are able to form a team and give us a new software if they receive the honer, respect they deserve with the financial benefit to feed their family.

We do not know what interest PowerGlove has right now but most probably it's to gain a good forum rank, have a spot it DT and be a respectable member. Today or tomorrow he will achieve it and then he will have no motive to move further. It's the reality.

The feed our family reasons could be some of the reasons why we must appreciate PowerGlove for the efforts he puts in without been asked to or paid to do so. Simply acts based on interest and I don’t mind what personal interests he might have but, I see one that is geared towards forum improvement at the moment and should the user be given credits for his contributions some day, it would be one that was well earned.
The idea of a team isn’t a bad one neither is having this done voluntarily on the sidelines an issue too. The need for whistle blowing so many other programmers here could come up with ideas and scripts that could be a plus for the forum, is unnecessary.

There would always be such eventuality when one stops doing what his known to be doing voluntarily and a lot of reasons could amount to that. Possibly as you’ve stated and could as well be to reasons as been just unable, lost interest in the forum, chose to be focused on family, is ill and many others. Perhaps other persons with concerns could keep up the work and not make the users absence felt.


Unlike the OP edition, this Recent edition doesn’t seem to be most vital to me!

[shahzadafzal]

Ok
Question: What do you do in your free time?
PowerGlove: I write patches for bitcointalk.

Previously, if you didn't check the "Show others your online status" option, it would still be pretty obvious when you were online because your "Last Active" time would still constantly update to be ~now. This has now been changed so that if you were last active within the last 72 hours and you have the show-online option disabled, then the exact time will not be displayed, and it will instead just say "(Recently)".

Thank you, PowerGlove. However, this makes me think if I have disabled the "Show others your online status?" option, why does it still display the exact date and time of my last activity after 72 hours?

If for periods <72 hours, it's showing Recently.

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.

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.

That's a great idea for the BPIP parser. If it can keep track of user activity somehow, we might find ourselves visiting BPIP more often!

[tranthidung]

Being a good programmer doesn't make you a good moderator. Let's not get carried away here.

For a moderator role, you don't need to be a programmer but for a global moderator or admin role, you will need to be a technical programmer, that's what I meant.

I was not talking about having a staff position. I was talking about to gain financial benefit of the time and talent invested.

I knew of forum's security bug bounty but I can't not recall PowerGlove won any award from it, not sure, and I don't think it's his motive.  

I could be wrong but right now it seems earning a good forum reputation but once it is achieved he will have no motivation to continue contribution. A hobby does not stay for long time but when a hobby turns into a profession then it become a career.

I agree that if he does it for happiness and it can stop anytime. People have their own lives beyond this forum and it's unrealistic to request them to stay here forever.

[pakhitheboss]

This patch will resolve the issue for someone blaming inconsistency or simalaties of login time. I do feel a lot of genuine users got banned cause accidentally they got logged in the same time.

I do understand this patch is meant for giving everyone active here the privacy of activities. If anyone here use this patch that means they are using for their own benifits. As BTT allows alt accounts some of the legends will use it to their benefits that will be evident when it doesn't show their accounts active

It is clear now that with this patch anyone can now use it for their own betterment. I personally don't think it will be good if anyone in the legend rank use it.

[LoyceV]

if I have disabled the "Show others your online status?" option, why does it still display the exact date and time of my last activity after 72 hours?

I'd say it should only show the date, not the time. Or even just the month.
Or just stay active, don't abandon Bitcointalk for more than 72 hours

I do feel a lot of genuine users got banned cause accidentally they got logged in the same time.

Tagged: maybe.
Banned: no way. Just like users aren't banned based on similar IP addresses, the won't be banned based on their login time.

[SamReomo]

I have checked this new feature and it's working properly. I believe it's a quite good patch and we all should be thankful to PowerGlove for devoting his precious time to make such useful patches for the forum.

He's truly a pro developer and someone who's very respected member of this forum. I hope we'll continue to see such great patches from PowerGlove and I'm also thankful to Theymos for implementing this useful feature regarding activity on this forum.

[Aanuoluwatofunmi]

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.

[promise444c5]

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  ??

[ibminer]

~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?

[Sandra_hakeem]

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.

[PowerGlove]

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.

[dkbit98]

Nice update from PowerGlove yet again.
It would be interesting to have full privacy option of showing Unkown Last Activity, is someone choose to select that for some reason.

This unfortunately broke BPIP's parsers, since (Recently) is not a valid datetime. We'll try to get it corrected as soon as possible.

I suspected this could happen as soon as I read the introduction post.
Similar thing happened with recent patch that broke BPIP extension quote function in closed topics.

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.

It's well deserved after fixing bugs and constantly improving forum software.
I feel much more optimistic about bitcointalk future now.

[Upgrade00]

Super job yet again PowerGlove and it's great you're getting paid for your efforts now.

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

Go to Account Related Settings. Toggle off Show others your online status, enter your password and click on change profile. There are no rank restrictions to limiting who can know when you are online.

[Hyphen(-)]

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.

It is clear now, and you deserve to be paid for all the technical efforts you are putting in to keep this forum up to date.

The developments are very important as they keep the forum current with the new features in global forums and provide someone who is willing to help out and always brings suggestions and good ideas just for the benefit of this forum.
Well-done PowerGlove.

[suchmoon]

This unfortunately broke BPIP's parsers, since (Recently) is not a valid datetime. We'll try to get it corrected as soon as possible.

I think I managed to unbreak it.

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.

LOL I thought the same thing. Too much work though. I do check for last post and last sent merit to update the last active date, which is what anyone could see anyway with a few extra clicks.

[nutildah]

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.

Congrats! You deserve it. Some serious brainpower on display in your patches and the forum is lucky to have you here. Kudos to you good ser.

[Quickseller]

This unfortunately broke BPIP's parsers, since (Recently) is not a valid datetime. We'll try to get it corrected as soon as possible.

If the parsed value is "(Recently)" you can handle it in some custom way.

Or if the parsed value is not in the expected datatype, you can handle the problem in a particular way. You can do the same for any other input received from any third party.

It seems when other members are probably going on with their life activities, PowerGlove is definitely busy making patches. Once again thank you PowerGlove for this addition.

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

If you are referring to the bitcoin theymos received years ago, the USD value of that bitcoin was only a few hundred dollars, probably well below the FMV of the time necessary to run the forum plus the operating costs. He happened to keep that money in bitcoin and see massive capital gains.

Anyone else, yourself included could have just as easily bought a few hundred dollars worth of bitcoin at the time, and would have seen similar gains if you held on for all these years.

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.

They will have been active between the last time you looked at the profile and the current time. Unless you are constantly refreshing their profile, you won't have an exact time.

Also, if profiles are refreshed too frequently, or if what you are describing is being used to pinpoint the date/time of last activity too frequently, the last active date can be cached, so it will only ever update every x amount of time.

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.

Good for you!

[LoyceV]

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.

Congratulations! That's well-deserved.

Does that mean I no longer have to feel guilty (Lol. As if I didn't ) if I suggest more things that need patching?

[Vod]

If you are referring to the bitcoin theymos received years ago, the USD value of that bitcoin was only a few hundred dollars, probably well below the FMV of the time necessary to run the forum plus the operating costs.

No bozo, I'm referring to the million dollars in bitcoin (at a few hundred dollars each) that Theymos spent on four people, at the rate of $100,000 USD a month.   Liars should have a good memory.