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Online Indicators

Seranda

Seranda

Fighting Evil by Moonlight 🌕
Joined
Jan 20, 2013
Location
Aterno City
Have you ever gone into a request thread, and read everything that you loved and said, "Hey, I'm going to RP with this person!" And saw that little green online marker and got all excited? Has the opposite ever happened to you?

I don't really rummage the RTs that much anymore, but when I do, I find some really great things. That being said... if it was recently bumped, and the person is offline, or appears offline, I may pass. Why? I don't know when this player is coming back. I don't know if this was a bump to see if they could get a hit, no one responded and they left for the rest of the day, or week, or month. The indicator is a big positive for me, as I can reach this guy/girl right now if I am quick enough. Even so, sometimes with online indicators on, some people don't answer, that's just the current nature of things.

Does this have any affect on anyone else? Do you ever feel weird if you know a partner is on and hasn't responded to your RP? It's usually a sign of lack of interest... but sometimes it's not. Sometimes people just need a little break, or have hit a wall (I strongly suggest speaking to your partner through OOC if you are stuck, work it out together). It might sound a little stupid, but I am much more likely to reach out to someone who is shown online than someone who isn't. Inspirations come and go violently fast (for me) and I will not wait a month for a theme I want right now.

Maybe it's just me.
 
Well seeing that you can turn the indicators off so it never shows when you are actually on, your reason might be a little faulty. Those never mean anything to me at all even if the they are showing on and stuff. I have seen people on for days and they never reply to me about stuff they came to me on. And I have had people off who gets to me right away. Indicators are nothing but to show if a person is on at the time or off, or hiding which at this point I am because I just didn't want people bugging me when I am on maybe checking out something but cannot actually post.

I honestly think you may be losing out on people by ignoring them because of these reasons.
 
It's possible that someone being offline means they'll never be back. But it's a lot more likely that they just went to sleep or went to go do their jobs or have fun with some other hobby. The odds that someone just so happened to have made their last bump before giving up for good and then also giving up for good less than 24 hours after making said bump (The time period in which you'd expect to get a hit in the first place if the bump caught someone's eye) is astronomically small. It's true they might not respond in a week if they're weekly posters, something I don't mind myself. If you want frequent posters, you can usually see fellow frequent posters just write in their threads how often they respond. It usually corresponds rather well to their actual activity, in my experience.

These days, if someone hasn't responded, I just leave it be. If they respond later on, great. If they don't, that sucks, but I move on. I used to feel really iffy about it, but it's gotten easier to move past eventual ghostings now than it used to be.
 
It has no real effect on me at all besides the slight hope they will get back quickly. Honestly, if I show interest in a plot or writer enough to message them, I'm willing to wait a few days for a response to my message and to start plotting, I'm just not the type of writer who is in any rush to get started. Excited sometimes, for sure, eager, yes, but I am patient and I can wait, and I wouldn't pass up the chance to write a plot I like just because they don't appear to be online at that very moment.
 
The indicator means little to me. Namely because even if they're on, it's no guarantee I'll get a reply, be it from an RP between us or from me reaching out to plot with them. I can speak for myself here. I'll typically be online a lot throughout the day, usually on mobile, but I do not post from my mobile. Only OOC chat, should someone approach me. Posts go out in the late afternoon throughout the evening. I would hope no one would get upset about that.
 
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I used to only contact people who were online at the times that I was active. Then when I realized they can hide, I just changed to contacting people who posted during or shortly before my active times.

You've got a few things going on in your OP. What I will say as to how online status affects my perception of a possible partner.. is that those who hide their online status (and especially also only play in PMs) have the highest rate of ghosting. I know there are various reasons I can see this combo, but the only thing I care about is how it affects me in the end. So, yeah. If I'm chatting about possibly partnering with someone, and I notice they're one of the super-shady types, I'll be less likely to invest than someone who's 'open'.
 
Since I am on mainland Europe, being somewhere between 6 and 9 hours ahead of the US, it's more likely than not that the person having written a request thread isn't online at the time I read it. I would seriously limit my options if I only were to react to those being online at that time.
 
I will say that looking back, it does seem rather silly not to reach out to others because of their online indicators. Someone may have just posted and logged off to go to work or something. Or they are hidden. I don't usually go into other's threads, but now I will definitely consider reaching out to more, so long as their bump wasn't a week ago or something.
 
Check their recent bumps or judge by the online indicator for sure.

Shoot your shot--you got nothing to lose!
 
Pretty much what @Burning Pyre said. I don't care about the green dot, because I know folks hide it, and while I prefer using an open BM tab to see the favicon red dot to see when I have new content, I know a lot of folks use email notifications instead. If they haven't been online in a week or more since bumping then I get a little skeevy as I can't tell if that means:

1. They've shuffled off to elsewhere, or
2. They just don't have any active RPs at the moment but would come back with a PM

At the same time I also consider RTs more than a few days since-bumped to be "stale", that is, I assume the RPer is no longer looking/found what they wanted, so that also plays into my decision. But as someone with active RPs going with folks on completely incompatible time-zone and sleep-schedules to my own for "live" interaction, I definitely stopped paying any mind to the green dot a long time ago.
 
I'm at the arse end of the world so a different time zone I am used to the sometimes huge time differences so it doesn't affect me one way or another. What I do go by sometimes is how many RP's they have done and how many times they may have been the one to end them.
 
My comp is often on. If someone pms me repeatedly I basically know it won't work.
 
Some people hide their online status to prevent stalking and harassment. I've gotten used to having to wait a day or two for a good reply, but a lot of eager beavers want those swift back and forth role plays, which requires two people to be online at the same time without distractions or complications to hinder them. That is such a rare situation to find that it's like the planets are aligned to make it happen. And then it never happens again. But then you have some users who just message whoever happens to be online, or has a recently bumped RT, usually with limited single sentence questions, or worse, they ask about some kinks that are never mentioned in your RT's or outright stated as turn offs. Those or pretty annoying, and sometimes creepy, so I can see why you wouldn't want that to happen.
 
Just as with any other online service, I treat the online status/indicator as a reference point; online simply means their account is logged in, which increases the chances of them being active as a person, but I don't treat it as if they are actually at their device or will respond. For this reason, I always try to make my accounts show me as away/idle after 10 minutes of not being active, and I make my status match my actual IRL status; however, it is imperfect.

Discord is a good example of this; online does not mean online (especially on mobile devices), and away is often used when people are online and active (do not disturb and offline are also used in the same way).
 
Discord is a good example where I know some people wait for online, but I am super on and off if I'm not just online, but in the mood. So ideally either you have a scenario where people understand online =/= available or you have the controls to be available exactly when you actually are.
 
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