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I´m posting this because I have some active questions in SO and I´m leaving for the weekend and wont have internet until monday or tuesday.

SO is a very active site and I hate no to answer/thank/comment people who are kind enough to answer my questions.

I think an "away" indicator like an out of office reply would be a really nice feature to add for "politeness" sake.

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  • Was this off-topic? why did I get voted down? was it because of the weekend thing? That was just the reasoning behind the feature request.
    – Trufa
    Oct 9, 2010 at 17:48
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    @user voting works differently on Meta: It is a mere sign of disagreement here, more than a judgement on the question's quality
    – Pekka
    Oct 9, 2010 at 17:49
  • @Pekka Thanks for the clarification!!
    – Trufa
    Oct 9, 2010 at 17:51
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    welcome to MSO! If/when you have a minute, you might want to glance over the FAQ about how this site is different.
    – Pops
    Oct 9, 2010 at 17:54
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    @Popular Demand I´m on it right know! thanks!
    – Trufa
    Oct 9, 2010 at 17:57

3 Answers 3

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It's nice of you to suggest this feature, but it's unnecessary. Users frequently "step away" from the site for a few days at a time for all sorts of reasons, including but not limited to trips. A certain baseline amount of civility is assumed; see this related question. Adding this feature would increase clutter/noise levels but not the overall value of the site.

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  • @ I see your point! thanks for the answer. To be fair the only place this feature would stand is in the profile page but I can see why it is no strictly necessary
    – Trufa
    Oct 9, 2010 at 18:01
  • If you just added a green or red dot next the asker's username it would hardly be clutter.
    – Jonathan.
    Oct 9, 2010 at 18:43
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    @Jon, the dots might not be too much clutter visually, but they would be too much clutter, er, "informationally."
    – Pops
    Oct 9, 2010 at 19:09
  • @Jon: besides, as @BrunoLM already said, we already have a "last seen" box. That serves the purpose to some degree...
    – studiohack
    Oct 9, 2010 at 19:13
  • +1 in an attempt to get you to the rep cap as discussed in this question meta.stackexchange.com/questions/67148/…
    – Hogan
    Oct 9, 2010 at 19:58
  • @Hogan, thanks, but you really shouldn't be upvoting just for that reason. The other question is a bug report, not a request for help in reaching the cap. (If you actually thought I wrote a good answer here and I'm just missing the joke, then disregard all that, and thanks again.) I have edited this answer so people have the option of retracting their upvotes.
    – Pops
    Oct 9, 2010 at 20:07
  • @Popular : lol, yes it was a joke. Maybe a bit to dry.
    – Hogan
    Oct 9, 2010 at 20:30
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It is a good idea in theory, but it chains users to the Stack Exchange network more than it should...users are free to come and go as they please, there are no rules or unspoken agreements that one must log in and stay active on SE... If we have status indicators, that starts to turn SE into another MySpace or Facebook...Which is not the goal...

If you really wanted to do this, edit your "About Me" box on your profile to reflect that you are gone, that way if users are wondering where you are, they will look at your profile...Not really a good idea though, never tell the online community that you will be gone, this opens your property up to robbery and all kinds of things....

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    +1 moreover, the unspoken agreement is that if somebody doesn't answer, it is assumed the person is away / asleep / at work - simply, away and unable to answer.
    – Pekka
    Oct 9, 2010 at 18:20
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There is a last seen on user profile.

IMHO there is no need for a status indicator. I also agree it would just be noisy.

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    +1 - It already exists.
    – Peter Ajtai
    Oct 9, 2010 at 19:46
  • I donn´t think it is the same thing, I does not make the same statement.
    – Trufa
    Oct 11, 2010 at 17:23

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