Some changes to the profile while we make it responsive

Question

Update 1

I’ve restored the profile age to all and fixed a few bugs y’all reported. I’ll be addressing individual answers as best as I can.

Original post

On our way to a fully responsive Stack Overflow, we just shipped some changes to the user profile. We won’t be enabling responsiveness just yet, but the top portion will be ready to be squishy.

I hope these changes are low impact on our way to a fully responsive profile. Think of this as more a realignment than a redesign.

Some changes that you’ll see immediately:

1. Basic reach-related stats moved to underneath the avatar near reputation.
2. Various links and other stats are now under the display name and some stats behind are only viewable by you or a moderator.
3. We got rid of the “Apparently, this user prefers to keep an air of mystery about them”, instead showing no biography. If it’s your profile and you don’t have a biography, we show a call to action to add one.
4. We’ve added an Edit profile button under the avatar if you’re a moderator or you’re viewing your own profile.
5. Biographies now have way more room horizontally, but we still cap to vertical scrolling.
6. The consecutive visit calendar UI has gone away. This is some super legacy UI that isn’t remotely mobile-friendly. The statistic will continue to be displayed for badge-earning purposes, but I think it’s a potentially toxic metric.
7. Dropped the profile views metric entirely. It’s a vanity metric and we don’t think it’s worth keeping around.

Before

After

Answer 1

One thing not explicitly mentioned which has also disappeared, at least for now on that screen, is the "Last seen" value. I realize it's only approximate, but I have sometimes found it useful in certain situations, e.g., if I write a comment that I want to be temporary until the person sees it. By checking this "Last seen" value and seeing it's well after my comment, I can then quite easily determine I can delete the comment. I prefer this to doing something else generally less accurate like checking when they last wrote a comment or post, edited a post or some other such activity.

Are there any particular reasons this value was removed? If so, then what are these reasons, and is the removal temporary or permanent? Finally, if it's being removed permanently, are there any plans to replace it with something similar, with this ideally being at least as accurate as the "last seen" value in the network profile mentioned below?

Update: There's still a generally less precise indication of when the user was "last seen" for each site a user is a member of in their network profile page in the "accounts" tab (e.g., mine's this). Although it seems to be accurate only to within about a day, e.g., "today", "yesterday", "7 days ago", "1 month ago", etc., this can still help somewhat with uses such as what I mention above. Thus, I hope that this, at least, will remain available to everybody.

Update #2: Other answers discussing the "Last seen" feature are:

• Sabito 錆兎's answer requests having a checkbox so users can control whether or not this is seen,
• blackgreen's answer lists additional reasons this metric is useful,
• fev's answer explains how seeing this value can specifically be useful when dealing with new users,
• Mad Scientist's answer gives several reasons to not have this value be shown,
• Ollie's answer expresses that it's useful when dealing with spam,
• NotTheDr01ds's answer lays out how this is helpful to reduce the number of downvotes some new users' posts get,
• GhostCat's answer states this "helps to determine the amount of time/energy to put into a response/comment",
• Anders Gustafson's answer remarks this is "useful for deciding whether to comment on old answers",
• Mari-Lou A's answer reminds us of a December of 2018 post about improving the user profile & settings, with most responses saying not much needs to be changed, and none about the "Last seen" value,
• ColleenV's answer says that if privacy is why "Last seen" was removed, then we should get more control over what's shared instead.

Answer 2

feature-request status-completed

Please put back the "last seen" and "member since" metrics

---

Edit, Aug. 10th: "Member since" has been restored

Edit, Nov. 3rd: a less-granular "Last Seen" has been restored

---

The "Last seen" metric is very useful for curation activities and to calibrate engagement with other users.

Some actual use-cases that come from my experience with the site:

• knowing whether a user might have seen my comment, and proceed to delete it safely
• knowing whether a user hasn't visited the site in a long time. If they haven't, leaving comments to ask for clarifications might be a waste of time. I may also choose to edit a post right away or wait for the OP to take action based on that.
• knowing whether it's worth it to answer old niche questions. Those questions may have very low views due to their narrow scope. Knowing that at least the OP is likely to see the answer is an incentive to add one. If I don't know that, I might choose to invest my time somewhere else where I'm more likely to actually help someone out.
• knowing whether deletable questions have a chance to get edited by the OP or not
• knowing whether authors of poor posts (NAA, VLQ, link-only, undisclosed affiliation) are likely to see or respond to comments. In case they are, there is incentive to try and educate them about usage of the site.

The "Member since" metric is also useful to tailor responses, albeit less so, possibly in combination with the "last seen":

• new users or infrequent visitors that don't follow the rules may elicit more leniency in comments, closures and delete votes.
• I may expedite edits on posts of new users, who may not be familiar with the site, and instead leave time to old users to fix their own posts in response to comments

In general, even though we have guidelines, curation activities need a case-by-case evaluation. Curators have to put some thought into what they do. And the more metrics we have to that end, the more our curation is effective, CoC-compliant and actually useful to the community.

Answer 3

status-completed

Another thing that's been removed (and not mentioned) is account ages. This information is still available, from things like SEDE, but is now missing from users' profile pages.

It's very nice to know if a user joined the site ten years ago, or ten days ago. This doesn't seem like it was removed for privacy reasons, as the age of an account isn't particularly private or difficult to figure out.

Anyone who cares enough will be forced to write or download a script to re-add this information, and everyone else will just have a useful and harmless feature removed.

Answer 4

feature-request status-completed

Please add "Member for" metric back

This was a very useful feature to know, not only how experienced someone is with Stack Overflow, but also to catch voting fraud. Not seeing this metric publicly is a regressed feature.

The only people who do not want to show this metric must be the ones that create multiple sock-puppet accounts to commit voting fraud.

Answer 5

Suggest to temporary revert this whole change network-wide and instead, do a trial run of it limited to one of "big meta" (MSE or MSO).

This would hopefully catch most painful issues and give an opportunity to adjust things without disrupting workflow of users at main sites.

Preferably, this trial meta run would be followed by gradual introduction of the changes at part of the main sites, like it was done when switching to CommonMark and enabling tables markdown. This would allow to find and address most of remaining issues without introducing pain to all users in the SE network.

Answer 6

7. Dropped the profile views metric entirely. It’s a vanity metric and we don’t think it’s worth keeping around.

I have to question "vanity" here for the sake of discussion. I always considered this number not as "show off" but as a personal quantification of how many people cared to noticed me.

It gives a feeling of belonging in the sense it indicates how known I am if someone randomly comes across my username.

In that sense I always thought about it as a positive cumulative indicator of being part of the community instead of a complete stranger. I consider it a far more personal indicator than say "people reached" because my profile is the personal presentation I want to give the community.

For new users this can be positive because they know someone cared about them individually by taking interest.

Answer 7

Here is how this should have been done, in my very humble opinion.

1. Featured announcement posted here on MSE with the title "Help us make some changes in profile page".
2. The changes would be listed, each explaining why it should be done.
3. Feedback would be gathered, for about a week or two, in the form of answers.
4. Based on feedback some changes might not be carried out, e.g. a feature that SE staff thought was minor and useless turns out to be really popular and liked by the community.

I'm very sad that this not the way Stack Exchange chose this time. And annoyed, because I liked some of the features that have been tossed away just like that.

It's even more sad because it looked like SE was starting to go forward and cooperate with the community. This is a big step backwards, back to the dark days where the community was ignored and considered just background noise.

Answer 8

Please provide alternate APIs to see statistics that were removed from view, if reinstating them is off the table

One common use of the calendar UI was to see, if the user's consecutive days reset at some point in the past, what specific day(s) one didn't register a visit the site. Now, however, it's not possible to see that. While one can go back and calculate what was the first consecutive day they visited, they can no longer see if they didn't register visits on just a single day or multiple days, as well as any past cases where their counter got reset. It also would help Meta users out tremendously when responding to questions "why did my counter get reset [x] days ago even though I visited on all days": one can tell the user to open the calendar and see which day(s) didn't count (perhaps they visited on different UTC times, or perhaps they didn't have enough activity for a visit to be registered).

Also, as Martijn Pieters commented, moderators make use of the calendar to investigate voting fraud and for other moderation reasons.

Likewise, for the profile views, while it may be a vanity metric that not many people care about, as at least one user commented, some users do like seeing that. Removing it entirely without providing any alternate shuts it out entirely for those users. (The same thing also applies to the calendar: while it may not be responsive, the possibility for a curious user to see which days they themselves visited the site, or for a moderator to use it as part of an investigation, shouldn't be completely shut out.)

I understand that putting these on the page itself takes up space on the page and makes it harder to make the site completely responsive. However, if there's no way to reinstate them on the page without making it unclean, please provide an alternate method or API to be able to see them.

Answer 9

feature-request

As a follow up to John Omielan's answer and this comment from animuson:

We've actually had quite a few complaints in the past that a "Last seen" indicator public visible is a creepy and intrusive thing to have on a user profile. So I imagine the disappointment will be very 50/50 here. ;)

I would suggest adding a checkbox for users to choose if they wish their 'Last seen' to be publicly viewable or not - Like how a user can choose if they wish to disclose their location or not by filling/not filling the location text box.

I would also suggest that this checkbox should be checked by default as it is what people have come to expect because of the old design.

Answer 10

I completely fail to see what "fully responsive" has to do with changing the profile layout on those 7 points.

The current layout looks less appealing than the former, that much I'm sure of. Screens are mostly horizontal these days, cramming everything into the vertical only causes more scrolling and leaves unused space.

Answer 11

If the point of this change is to make the site "responsive", it should hardly create a horizontal scroll bar where previously there was none? As far as I understand it, the point of responsive design is to resize or move elements to avoid unnecessary scrolling.

Yesterday, I was able to view my profile without scrolling to the right. Now, I can't, in the same browser window.

This is particularly aggravating in places where a button drifted off into the obscured right margin. (Pardon the black background instead of transparent; IMGUR seems to do that when providing a resized image.)

My preference is to view multiple browser windows, terminal windows, and editor windows on the same display. My browser windows tend to stay at roughly the same size after I configure the browser initially, though there is no precise scientific measurement - I just resize them to what feels good with Stack Overflow and a couple of other sites, and then leave them that way; the screen shots here are 2282 × 1588 at 144 dpi, including browser chrome.

Answer 12

About the metrics which indicated for how long someone has been a user and the "last seen" time: were they removed because they were considered private information? Because removing them in order to heal our vanity seems... somewhat unreasonable. If vanity is such an issue, why not give the option to show/hide metrics from other users?

And while I get that metrics is not equal to experience, yet a certain familiarity with the site is expected from older users than from the newer.

Also, I really like the "last seen" option from this perspective, too: let's say a new user lands on the site, asks a dumb question or posts a one line answer, having no idea about how the site works. As a reviewer, you welcome them and point them to the tour of the site and ask them to edit their question/answer accordingly. If they don't edit after a while, or if they don't answer your comment when you ask for clarifications, the "last seen" option comes in handy: if they left the site you know they will take time to get back, and so you will be more patient. You will not misunderstand them as ignoring the given indications.

Are there any chances we will get these back?

Answer 13

I've waited a bit to add my voice here so I could see what the staff have said in response to our feedback...

I'm gonna start this by saying that, inevitably, someone had to write a nice little userscript called LegacyProfiles to temporarily revert this change. +1, Spectric.

Second, you gotta start asking for the community's input on important stuff like this a bit more often. I'm not saying you do this every time, but when it comes to UI changes such as line spacing, blockquote color, font changes etc. etc., it's nicht so gut. If you think the reactions are going to be so 50/50, why change it? That looks like a good balance. 80/20 is not.

Third, I've got a problem with the "Last Seen" metric being removed, for a couple reasons. I know it's been said before, but I'm going to give it another shot. That particular metric is really useful in some cases with moderation on newly made beta sites. I don't go out of my way to make that my biz, but it's definitely noticeable when looking at spam in those places and it helps.

In the long run, this wasn't well thought out. Reassurances that things are getting better aren't convincing if you do this. So please, a big feature-request: revert this. That will get a good reaction, as it hasn't been done before AFAIK.

Answer 14

feature-request

Please drop the "reached" metric.

Previously at least it showed the number of people reached. Now it looks like I can reach 3.6 meters with my arms. What?

This metric is absolutely useless. It does not convey anything, only being there for vanity.

Answer 15

In a sense "Member for" kinda gets treated like a low UID would be on slashdot. It is a vanity metric, and while it's not useful 'practically', it kinda means a fair bit to old timers. It would be nice to have that back.

Answer 16

While on par I actually agree with some of these changes (and by "some" I mean "yay, progress towards a responsive profile" and "okay fine if the calendar is really legacy I can live without it"), perhaps this is a learning moment.

The consecutive visit calendar UI has gone away. This is some super legacy UI that isn’t remotely mobile-friendly. The statistic will continue to be displayed for badge-earning purposes, but I think it’s a potentially toxic metric.

Had you just left it at "this isn't mobile-friendly", there wouldn't be any personal feelings about this feature that You™ removed without talking about it. As a recovering web developer, I know if things aren't supported, they're just not supported. Keeping it less about your own personal opinions and making the sentiment neutral is preferable.

Dropped the profile views metric entirely. It’s a vanity metric and we don’t think it’s worth keeping around.

Another sentiment where it's Your™ opinion injected here. The rationale might be valid, but it's not pleasant to hear it enforced from the top down, if you know what I mean.

Ultimately I'm looking forward to a responsive profile, but the reason that there's friction is that the profile we've had has always been what we've known. Yes, moving it to responsive is the prime objective, but this communication sorely lacks the kind of benevolent dictatorship-style of communication, which elaborates why you chose to make the decisions you did in clear, neutral and objective language.

So again - I'm not opposed to the change. I see Stack Exchange more on my phone than I do on the desktop. Just don't suddenly yank components of the UX that the community has come accustomed to or actually enjoys Just Because.

We were told that we would be getting a reactive profile. This is a refactor. If you want to also introduce changes to the way things work, that expands the scope of this to not just being about making the profile responsive, which needs better communication and planning than this.

Answer 17

status-deferred

When users have an especially long biography, to the point when it has a scroll bar, it pushes the "Communities" and the "Top Meta Posts"/"Top Network Posts" pretty far down, even on a larger screen. This also leaves a "hole" of empty space in the left side bar. From my profile:

Would it be possible to sticky the Communities section (and the ones below it) below the profile picture/stats, rather than have it aligned with the new badges UI? Alternatively, could the vertical space dedicated to the biography be reduced to allow the Communities section (and friends) to be more obvious?

Answer 18

Like a lot of people I am still not blessed with a widescreen monitor at work and use 3 1280 x 1024 monitors. This change, which should be good for smaller screens, has not been kind to those of us on them. Compare the pictures below, left old taken yesterday after the badge UI release and right new as of right now:

_{Click images to enlarge.}

The two aren't quite comparable as I removed the left column for the old profile. Notice how there is a lot more information available before scrolling in the old view. This seems to be mostly caused by point 2, why this information was moved when there's a perfectly good space on the right is beyond me.

However, this does seem like it could mostly be alleviated if the line items for point 2 were spaced out horizontally and not vertically.

To go through your points:

1. This is a nice change, I like it!
2. As above this seems mostly pointless for now and makes less use of the real estate available
3. I like the latter half of the change for the current user but I'm not sure about it for other users. It is a bit strange just seeing an empty white space with nothing in it and nothing to indicate what should be there (beyond just knowing what should be) and the top links do float strangely.
4. Another nice change, making this easier to find for people is good.
5. I don't like this, as above really. The more room horizontally has come at the expense of giving other stuff more vertical space which results in less information being visible.
6. I'm not sure why it's toxic but I don't really have much of an opinion on this one.
7. I know people like this one but it doesn't really matter either way for me here.

And for the hidden items:

8. Last seen was removed - This was actually incredibly useful and I used it all the time. Has User A seen my comment, yep they've been online, okay I'll delete it. Or nope, lets leave it around for a while longer. This has even more uses for a moderator as well and some others for a normal users.
9. Account ages has been removed - This is again incredibly useful so it's easy to tell how much guidance a user may need. Not all users that need guidance will have the "New contributor" indicator and not all "New contributors" will actually need guidance. Account age is one metric in determining this.

Answer 19

Removal of "Last Seen" goes against Stack's attempts to be "welcoming to new users".

I've noticed a substantial uptick in downvotes on new user's questions and answers, and I'm assuming it's for the same reason I'm having to downvote earlier.

Previously, I would FIRST provide a comment suggesting a change to the question -- For example, a nicely-worded heads-up that it was off-topic, with a recommendation to delete it and move it to the correct site. I'd wait a day or so, and if I still saw the question in my "Watched tags" list, I'd check to see if the user had been back online to see the comment.

I would previously be able to wait to have some (not complete) assurance that they had seen the suggestion. If they had still failed to take action, then I might downvote.

Now, without the ability to see when the user last visited, I just downvote automatically after a certain period of time. The new user may come back to find that their question has 3 or 4 downvotes before they even had a chance to take action.

That's not very "welcoming", and is likely to drive away new users.

Please bring back "Last seen", make it opt-out, and then new users can decide at some point (if and when they become regular users) whether or not to turn it off.

Answer 20

Some changes that you’ll see immediately:

I saw immediately (after learning about this change): "this feels like 2019 again".

You know, instead of following your new approach where you ask for feedback before making changes, you make the change and then hope a large enough fraction of the users finds them helpful.

And yes, for me, as a curator, no longer having the "last seen" with "enough granularity"; I find that bad, as that was one (among others) metric that helps to determine the amount of time/energy to put into a response/comment.

Answer 21

feature-request

If a user hasn't filled out anything in their profile, the space to the right is completely blank:

It would be nice if the rest of the profile page (badges, tags, etc.) were pushed up when there's no profile information filled out.

Answer 22

Hey, wasn't there a recent survey conducted about the profile page?

In December 2018, @Donna, Community Design Lead and Principal Product Designer, asked the MSE community

[emphasis in bold not mine]

Help us improve the user profile and settings

[…]

With the launch of Teams, we have yet another set of use cases that the profile & settings has to serve, and it does so in a mediocre fashion. We want to change that. Not just because Teams needs a better profile, but because Stack Overflow and Stack Exchange have needed a better, fully responsive profile for a long time.

We need your help

We’re kicking off these changes by conducting user research about what people like and dislike about the profile, and how it might be improved. […]

The number of profile views, the calendar, the date someone created an account and the last seen elements were not issues for anyone three years ago. With 204 upvotes and one downvote the highest scored answer by @ArtofCode asserted

I think the profile is actually one of the most well-thought-out parts of Stack Exchange already, and I'd question whether it actually needs much changing. I can certainly see the argument for wanting to get Teams to feature in profiles, but I'd much rather see that get worked into the existing profile in some of the free space somewhere than a whole new profile page get built.

This answer by @hat suggested that security issues were close to their heart, but no mention was made about the “member for” or “last seen” metrics; overall they too liked the profile page.

Please don't make any big changes!

I like the SE profiles. The flow is logical and compartmentalised; the organisation works well for me. If I want to check up on rep, I can go to the reputation tab with one click. If I want to see reviews I have completed, I can browse through them without too much distraction.

For the same reasons I opt for separate profiles for each site. I like to have everything in separate "areas". The current profiles are almost integrated already, anyhow; if I want to check up on another profile, it is only a click away, in the menu. However, it is a real pain to have to log in to all sites individually. For security reasons I clean cookies regularly, which forces me to log in to every profile. If logins were network-wide I would be happy.

In the quest to make profiles fully responsive, @Aaron Shekey could have looked at the results of that research and determined that features such as “last seen” and “member for” were not highly valued by users and would not be missed. In fact, "last seen” is not even directly mentioned in the company's announcement.

[emphasis in bold, mine]

2. Various links and other stats are now under the display name and some stats behind are only viewable by you or a moderator.

In case this needs reminding, using a site is not only about posting and voting on contributions, it's about curating a community, about helping newcomers learn the ropes, explaining why their question is considered off-topic, asking the OP for clarification, encouraging authors to improve their posts, but as a user myself with nearly 9 years of experience I want to be sure I'm not wasting my breath, so I visit a person's profile and check when they last participated or logged in. This is one of the reasons why it's important to consult a spectrum of people who actively and continuously use a site–not just Stack Overflow–before making significant changes to the site.

On the other hand, in a comment, animuson ♦ said: We've actually had quite a few complaints in the past that a "Last seen" indicator public visible is a creepy and intrusive thing to have on a user profile. So I imagine the disappointment will be very 50/50 here. ;)

I've been thinking about this privacy issue a bit and apart from the argument that it's “creepy”, I've not read anything that convinces me why this statistic should be hidden from public view.

For example, I now know that the last comment by @Yxxxx was posted 18 hours ago. What do I do with that information? Do I write them a personal email? Contact him or her via LinkedIn. Do I search for a developer with that name in the town they live? I suppose I could message them on Twitter (if I had a Twitter account). In actual fact, I could do any of things at anytime thanks to the links a user chooses to post on their profile.

I have free access to a great deal of information about many users because of what is written on their profile pages not because I read they were "last seen" 18 hours ago.

If someone desires to keep secret the time they last logged in there are many workarounds, especially for a developer, to use.

Supporters for removing the "last seen" statistic argue:

1. The "last seen" fields leaks information about user behaviour, you might consider this information not significant yourself, but this feature clearly allows everyone interested to determine when a user is accessing the site (and with enough effort to fully map the times a user is active). If I say that this information is nobody else's business but my own, then this is fundamentally a privacy argument

2. It's a creepy metric - I don't want people to know when I was last here, and there are many people with even stronger, more visceral and life changing reasons for wanting it gone.

3. I think removing the "last seen" field is a good idea, …[it] simply leaks too granular information and allows a sufficiently determined person to track detailed access patterns for a specific user.

People who wish to remain anonymous are free to choose whatever username and avatar they please, some go a step further and use a fake user number. They leave their biography box empty, they don't chat, they don't participate on meta sites, they do very little, if any, interaction with other users. Stack Exchange allows users to set up multiple accounts and hide their accounts in their network profile, e.g. a user appears to have one account on their network profile when they may have joined 80 communities using multiple accounts, which SE allows users to create. And finally, SE allows users to lurk, to stop posting for years, and to create throwaway accounts. In fact, on Stack Overflow there are millions of accounts that are lying idle. So, if I am serious about guarding my privacy, i.e. it's nobody's business what I do in my work/spare time, SE gives me plenty of tools to do precisely that. I know nothing about computing so think what a developer is capable of knowing and doing if privacy is a security issue for them.

• Can someone please give a real-life scenario why the "last seen" feature is an invasion of privacy or poses a serious threat?

How is that type of data different from posting an answer or a comment which comes complete with edit and time stamps?

Answer 23

bug localization status-completed

There're no source strings to translate for "reached" and "Edit profile". Checked via https://ru.traducir.win

Answer 24

If the profile picture is not large enough it is not scaled to fit the width and the gray background area overlaps with the stats area. Well, it looks ungraceful to me.

Answer 25

I’ve given this some thought and I think I can articulate why I have such a strongly negative reaction to this change.

My profile is my avatar on the Stack Exchange network. It’s the only place the community can’t edit and the only place “fluff” is allowed. Y’all are treating changes to my page and what information is displayed there like it is just about the UI and your server performance. You took away information I liked on my profile without giving me any warning or input and then essentially called me silly for caring about “vanity” stats in a place that is supposed to be all about me. The justification for some of these changes is (very patronizingly) what you imagine is “for our own good” instead of a data driven decision that I might not like, but could accept because it’s based on something rational.

If removing “last seen” was really about privacy, you would be working to give me more control over what was shared on my profile and what wasn’t. Do you think David is proud of the Stellar Question badge earned on one of the worst scored posts on Meta? Shouldn’t he have a choice of whether that badge is showcased on his profile? If “last seen” is so creepy, why can’t I choose to hide my reviews from my activity? No-one needs to know when I’m in the queues.

Profiles are not just another page on the site that needs to be made responsive; they are personal and y’all should have more sensitivity to that. You should not be changing them arbitrarily. We should have input to the changes, and the reasons for the changes should be supported by data and facts, not someone’s opinion about whether a badge for a login streak is toxic.

Answer 26

Why is the calendar on click of consecutive visited days removed?

I think it was a good feature to see my present days and not present days.

Answer 27

A minor detail, but the tilde (~) was removed from the People reached count on your main profile. It's still on the main activity page, though.

Answer 28

As the eyes get used to it, it is normal for each change in the UI to get negative reactions at first. As developers, we know the situation well due to our customers. Perhaps people can get used to that profile UI after a while. But I think you should ask us about similar changes with a poll or whatever before you implement it.

By the way, you dropped the views from the profile, but we can see it with this query from SEDE:

select Views,* from Users where Id=UserId

At least I can see my actual value :) Please don't remove this field from the query page.

Answer 29

If the user hasn't set any details, the time details aren't aligned

If none of the location, website, etc. links/info is set, the (you and mod) info with membership time etc. floats unaligned in a weird looking way.

Answer 30

The 'Last seen' was useful for deciding whether to comment on old answers. Before if I saw an old answer to a question and wanted to leave a comment asking for clarification, I could look at when the user was last seen to get an idea as to how likely the user was to reply to my comment and how long I might need to wait for a response. I mean if the user had for instance been last seen that day I could more reasonably expect a response than if the user had been last seen 3 years ago and leaving a comment would be more likely to be worth it in the former than in the latter. Now if I see an answer to an old question and am confused about something the user says in the answer I'm less motivated to comment asking for clarity as its harder to know if my comment will actually be worth it.