Randy Petersen

I'll step forward and answer this and at the same time, hope you'll indulge me with a few answers. We (IB was not involved in this so please absolve them from this ... but hold them responsible for the other tech bumblings) or I'll just go ahead and say I was having problems in addressing a few members of FlyerTalk because I was relying in their last visit date as a reference point for a comment or action. In my research, I discovered that in "invisible" mode, the last visit time and date was not recorded and it lead to a series of somewhat incoherrent conversations base on an incomplete record of time on FlyerTalk. It was becoming somewhat a problem. And the first thought in my mind was -- why the heck would anyone really need to be invisible? Members already can hide behind their user name, but to try and hide when they were on FlyerTalk last for whatever reason just doesn't sound all that necessary to me. When reading a particular thread, it never occurs to me (again, this is me) to look at the thread page to see who may be lurking in or not. And by being invisible, it seems to give rise to the ability to shadow another member and of course that is frowned on, so let's do this:
1) Give me your flak for the change including the flack about not notifying you. Truth is, really, what would you do about a change like this? Hurry up and hide for the last ten minutes of being invisible?
2) More importantly, provide me with some reasonable reasons why anyone would really need to be invisible. And be patient with me -- I just don't get why any member would need to be on FlyerTalk but not be on FlyerTalk. Do we really spend that much time searching out members to see if they are online or not? Isn't that the purpose of the green lighted button? Seems to me, and I may be totally off base here, is that it's sort of deceiving -- "I haven't been online lately and didn't see your PM, or your post, etc." Winky, winky.

So, here I am, exposed to the world for this change, not educate me and remember, if there were any significant number of members being invisible -- how the heck would I know they liked or used the option if they were invisible? (this means, be respectful of how others may see this option)

Thanks and I join you in being very disappointed in the ability of IB to provide us with a stable platform to enjoy FlyerTalk.

Randy