Your request seems reasonable, and I think it can accommodated without too much difficulty. For example, each user can set a “vacation” option, which if turned on, will cause every unanswered comment directed at that user to receive a “I’m away from this blog” status response.
Something that could be done unintrusively and without manual intervention from users is some indicator that the author has not logged in recently. eg. A change in color somewhere, an asterix, etc.
I like this idea, whether or not any other suggestions are put into practice, though I suggest that there be a way to opt out of using it (with a different/complementary signal that you’re doing so, rather than showing as always or never active) - there are periods when I only have the time or energy to skim the blog, but not comment, and I’m sure I’m not the only one who finds themselves in that position or simply prefers privacy.
I feel that something like bug tracking / trouble ticket software format could be appropriate for this purpose—unresolved arguments would be marked as such, people could view unresolved “arguments” assigned to them, and it would be easy to judge the level of commitment of participants by their number of unresolved arguments.
Obviously, participating in such a system would require much higher level of commitment than that of the current blog format.
Your request seems reasonable, and I think it can accommodated without too much difficulty. For example, each user can set a “vacation” option, which if turned on, will cause every unanswered comment directed at that user to receive a “I’m away from this blog” status response.
I do not like autoresponders.
Something that could be done unintrusively and without manual intervention from users is some indicator that the author has not logged in recently. eg. A change in color somewhere, an asterix, etc.
I like this idea, whether or not any other suggestions are put into practice, though I suggest that there be a way to opt out of using it (with a different/complementary signal that you’re doing so, rather than showing as always or never active) - there are periods when I only have the time or energy to skim the blog, but not comment, and I’m sure I’m not the only one who finds themselves in that position or simply prefers privacy.
I agree. You shouldn’t be expected to manually delete your cookies in order to manipulate activity indicators.
I feel that something like bug tracking / trouble ticket software format could be appropriate for this purpose—unresolved arguments would be marked as such, people could view unresolved “arguments” assigned to them, and it would be easy to judge the level of commitment of participants by their number of unresolved arguments.
Obviously, participating in such a system would require much higher level of commitment than that of the current blog format.