your current activity (the thread you are reading) is public

[RunShepherdRun]

When you click on the profile of a member who is online, you can see what thread s/he is currently reading. For example:

Current Activity: Viewing Thread Anyone have experience w/Iams Probiotic Puppy?

Two questions, please:

1) What is this new feature good for? What is the benefit for us as community members to be able to see each other in that respect?

Not that anyone has anything to hide, but still it makes me uncomfortable to move in a panopticum.

2) Do the threads each member reads get tracked by the new owner of the site to create every member's consumer profile? And to then profit from targeted ads? If so, this consumer profile can get linked to whatever information I provided when I registered for the non-commercial version of the forum, my real name, my email address, etc. Is that the business for this site now that it's commercially run?

From a market 'research' perspective, a commercially run online community volunteers as a self-generated focus group that generates targeted marketing data, both as a group and for its individual members. More targeted than Google can by linking my gmail (if i choose to use it) to my google searches (if i choose to use it).

Choices to be made. I'd be grateful for answers.

Sarah

[Blitz1203]

The feature is a common forum feature and I don't believe it can be tracked/recorded unless someone is sitting there refreshing the page all day and writing stuff down. In my experience with forums, I've used it to see popular posts and figure out if someone is replying to one of my posts/threads. If you're waiting for a response it kind of helps in easing up as you can clearly see someone is about to post and so on. I understand where you're coming from, but I wouldn't see it that way if I were you.

[RunShepherdRun]

Thanks, Blitz, but we must be talking about different features. The feature I brought up is not a tool to find out whether 'someone' is responding to a post of mine. It is about going to a specific member's profile, e.g. to send her/him a PM, and seeing what thread they are currently reading. That would be none of my business, I think, and therefore nothing I would want to see. If what you mean is posting and then hovering over a specific member's profile to watch whether they are on the thread I posted in, I'd find that uncomfortable. That is the panopticum.
A feature that allows tracking the threads a member visits can of course be used to record that same information for consumer profiling/advertising- that's what commercial site software does. Not stone age manual writing down.

[Raziel]

Yah that is pretty weird, I JUST noticed that.

[arycrest]

Maybe I'm wrong, but I thought I came across this "feature" in the old forum version too? I couldn't figure out what it was good for.

[Lauri & The Gang]

On the old board you could check Who's Online and it would tell you what they were doing (reading a post, replying to a thread, etc.).

[Fodder]

this is not a new feature. the old forum had it as well... to the right... under users online - you could click on details.

i believe if you hide your online status - you are then removed from that list. the old forum had something like registered(22) invisible(17) guests(30)

[Barb E]

I often used it on the old forum - If I wanted to "talk" to someone sometimes I'd check to see what they were doing. If they were in their PMs or replying to a post I could figure it might be awhile before they'd be free. If they were just poking around it might not be as long before they were free.

[selzer]

OMG, is THIS why I got asked to represent Ohio on some PETA driven legislation???

Is THIS why HSUS has sent me a thank you for my membership the last three years in a row (after each of which I called and told them to get me outta their files)???

Is THIS why the ASPCA keeps begging for money??? I mean, there aint no NY in my address, if I want to help animals it will be from some state at least as depressed as my own.

And all these dog-type sales brochures and mags???

Gee whiz, I have been blaming my veterinarian's office, and my credit cards for selling my info.

disclaimer: any capital letters and multiplied punctuation is just for effect, I am not angry or anything, just think the whole thing is pretty funny.

[LisaT]

selzer, I don't think this is why you're getting all that stuff.....

I'm wondering, if folks click on my profile, if they can see what I'm doing. I'm supposed to be invisible.