I went all out on my thoughts in that Presence Feature topic. What I said in there, I stick to today and forever.
To where the very feature suggested in this thread is to be part of a plugin I am determined to make as a “first project” in learning the languages in Discourse’s stack.
I do a lot of “chatting”. Rather, I use “chat rooms” for intense writing sessions with others (aye, Roleplay).
Also, for actual discourse. I may not look like it in some ways, but I am heavily into philosophy, esoteric topics, spirituality, religion, mental illness issues in society, stigma; the heavy stuff.
Knowing when someone is typing allows me to shut up and wait. But, aye, I look like the type to turn something “dry” and “pedantic” into a textual high-contact sport.
Someone like me needs “the flag” so I slow my intense drive. I do not want to overwhelm those brave enough to take me on in discoursin’. *grunt*
I Hate chat rooms. Hate them. Reduced to some basic text field, no buttons for markdown akin to a well-loved word processor, no safety saves on my current writing 'cause I already congested that dinky text field with 500+ words in ~10 minutes. To lose that? Happened before; made me go into a panic attack and require Ativan. Then, no preview of my markdown and no ability to go back and edit my writing once I do enter it. No wiki features; that would elevate my writing so others can contribute. I am getting the heart-racing now just thinking about it; the possibilities.
But I feel cramped with “chat”. Monster Guy; tiny writing space.
Discourse (with nominal capital D even though it start th’ sentence here) is a dream for someone like me, a discourser (a philodator). Truly, the name of this web app was a snare; reeled me in and I consented to the seducing gravitational pull.
And why I am here today, help out as I am able, despite a lot of problems in my life preventing me from truly digging into this gift and helping out even more with that hands-on, intimate experience under my cranium.
Biggest problem is this lack of presence feature; especially the one detailed here. And why my mind stops me from installing Discourse locally and get to work.
Without something like that, I truly feel I am going in blind. I used that same word from the previous topic.
Chat is too quick in nature. I get the sensation of needing to hitting enter with every few bits of writing I make. Hate that. Makes it look messy too. Not like the neat presentation Discourse provides so well. And from this behavior, when someone sees a discrepancy in my cognitive process and the logic chains from it, they want to type. They see “Tarak’ha is typing.” and they suddenly stop.
The mere celestial epoch I see the flicker of letters near the place my mind expects "<name> is typing." --I stop. They see that. They know what I did. But, I further it with my own “flag”.
(Two separate teams. Second one scrolls down to five more of the Xerox-copy same.)
(That is Mattermost; great open source Slack alternative. But not great for what I do.)
Not spamming you all with *listens* here. Maybe with my verbosity but not chat lines.
But, here on Meta, I do have the frustration of typing ~100 words and then suddenly a reply pops up, with a form of the answer, or another question I now feel the need to address, and change some of what I have down already, go on a new path.
Aye. *exhale*
I say all this as I do not want anyone to think my original intent was to turn Discourse into a chat room. Makes me think of the noise I personally associate with social networks. Oh, you know my ire for them.
Said my bit, again, as in the Presence Feature topic. I know I am only one person, with a unique reason. I see all these reasons to not have this feature be like high school drama, or at least it sounds that way. Not to devalue the concern those whom be against this feature. Hell no; you love Discourse as much as me to be here and stand with your words. I respect that. Thank you for caring and being overwhelmingly passionate like I am: a serious psycho-psychologin’ community manager, and someone writing to be heard, to find peers and make a difference.
Thank you for your *listens*