User summary pages

Is there any reason for displaying most of those stats on user summary pages? I feel like it's creepy to record visit/read time stats (even though most websites do that), let alone publicly display them.

The gamification of forum use with the top/most whatever lists is also uncomfortable.

Most recent is useful, but I know, you didn't mean that.

Some of that stuff is probably configurable; I'll look into it. Other things might require changes to the software hint hint.

On investigation, out of the fifty gazillion configuration options, none are about privacy or about treating users like adults. Oh, except for one that's already off: awarding badges. "Congratulations! You get a First Post badge!" etc.

So I'm afraid it'll take some work to follow your otherwise excellent suggestions. :frowning:

(Have I ever mentioned that the whole point of smileys used to be to see how creative you could be in expressing an emotion through ASCII-art? You can still see that in the ¯_(ツ)_/¯ one, which I guess is so clever that even the clueless emoji people couldn't bring themselves to ruin it.)

I suppose we could just disable emoji... There is a setting for that.

No, let’s not disable emoji! Emoji are fun and they do tend to lighten communication. (No one auto relaxes shrug because it’s just very involved and Iif you type that you probably mean to show it, compared to say “: )” which is easier to type than :slight_smile: . But there is :man_shrugging: if you really want an picture version.)

I don’t think that addresses the actual concern. I do agree that displaying stats for everyone is excessive — though I personally find my own stats to be useful as a means of moderation.

Also, there is a use in having those stats available to moderators. When you deal with issues of trolling, or other not so great behavior, they’re helpful in understanding user activity. But mostly that’s more useful when you have tons of people. I would happily disable these until we need them, but we don’t currently have that option.