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Aug 18, 2021 at 13:49 history edited user1271772 CC BY-SA 4.0
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Aug 7, 2021 at 15:37 comment added bad_coder @Tinkeringbell but worst, it a deprives individual users -by rendering it unimportant- and thus the community, from a sense of personal history and antiquity. It also reduces usability because now you'll have to check the activity history several clicks deep to get a rough estimate of the join date. It's an overall lose for no tangible gain, its impacts on a human level of what makes for a usual experience are broader than any shallow argument and should not be reduced to design or UX alone.
Aug 7, 2021 at 15:28 comment added bad_coder @Tinkeringbell I'm not gonna do the bibliographical legwork on this one, enough to say every single modern psychological theory integrates the person over time (one random example among many see level 2 here). The same about integrating over time can be said of other fields. Removing the date deprives the community of the one single indicator over which the entire participation (in all the dimensions you mention) can be intuitively timed at a glance.
Aug 7, 2021 at 9:39 comment added Martin James I am hardly surprised that this measure, something that helps identify one-account-per-question 'Member for today' deadbeats/vamps, was introduced without any notification/consultation.
Aug 6, 2021 at 15:12 comment added PM 2Ring @Tinkeringbell Fair point, but profile age is useful when taken in conjunction with other metrics. If someone has been a member for 5 years but doesn't have much activity in terms of flags, post count, etc, I can safely assume that they are both unlikely to know much about how the site works and that they aren't very motivated to learn how the site works. I give clueless newbies a lot more leeway than someone who's been around for 5 years and is still acting clueless.
Aug 6, 2021 at 8:23 comment added Tinkeringbell Mod @bad_coder how does profile age indicate experience? Plenty of people have profiles that have been around for years, yet no specific experience on a site (I do, so SmokeDetector can raise spam flags on sites I have no other participation on). Age does not say anything, and it's certainly not 'the most important one': Experience is gained through participation, so helpful flags, reviews, edits, posts are much, much stronger indications of experience than a vanity metric.
Aug 6, 2021 at 1:37 history edited bobble CC BY-SA 4.0
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Aug 6, 2021 at 1:36 comment added bad_coder This was an important psychological indicator (perhaps the most important one) of how experienced a user is on a site. It's disorienting not having that number (kind of like the fact no clocks are visible inside casinos).
Aug 6, 2021 at 1:16 comment added 0Valt Well, it's certainly wasn't without its uses - knowing that a person is fresh to the network or they have been around for ages is a useful metric during interactions. This "member for" stat should definitely be brought back!
Aug 6, 2021 at 0:54 history answered Journeyman GeekMod CC BY-SA 4.0