STALKING!

[Countes-Olivia-Manny]

Players should be provided with the option to designate their accounts as either private or public.

This flexibility allows individuals to control their privacy preferences in accordance with their personal comfort levels.

[nik592]

And what exactly would a private account entail?

There does need to be some level of visibility in terms of another player's profile - if I am considering a table, I should be able to take a look at the reputation of my potential opponents. Red thumbs would still apply of course, but there will be players with poor reputations I haven't met yet.

Players should also not be able to hide who they are from a strategy POV - if I play a player at a particular game all the time, maybe I know their usual play style and will adjust my game accordingly. If a player can hide that, they do take some advantage over their opponents who are known.

[Remkar]

Players should be provided with the option to designate their accounts as either private or public.

This flexibility allows individuals to control their privacy preferences in accordance with their personal comfort levels.

You still haven't address any of my specific questions. Without knowing exactly what you are trying to prevent (specifically), it's hard to try to see if there is a workable solution.

Like nik said, there are negatives to privacy features, so the pros/cons need to be weighed, but that can only happen if we know what these behaviors are (specifically) that you're trying to prevent, and if there are alternative solutions.

[FrankJones]

I think it makes sense for people to have their status show as "offline" if they wish to not have people be able to know exactly when they are online or not. Or there could be a setting, "Only show online status to friends".

As for hiding game history - that seems to be a feature of this site, that people can review games from different perspectives to study, learn, and improve.

Making it possible to hide one's history might be a good feature to grant to premium members. I also think that if a person hides his or her game history, it should also hide them from being displayed on the rankings leaderboard. that would encourage some of the top players to leave their game history visible.

As for the actual stalking being discussed. Well, stalking is serious, and should not be permitted. Also, creating multiple accounts is against the rules here, right?

I am not sure exactly what the nature is of the stalking described by the OP though. The explanation was indeed very vague, and it is unclear to me exactly what the alleged stalked is doing.

I also have no idea how anyone knows when someone with a new account is a person who has created a second account to get around the red-thumbs system. I have played games against players new to the site. I have no idea whether the person is actually new, or simply made a new account.

[MackMook]

"Oh no, someone can know when I'm online"

The site suggestion "Better Privacy: Hide Game History, Online Status, and only Mutual Friends" has almost 2600 votes. Setting your status to invisible or offline is a common feature on many platforms, such as Discord.

I personally think it's one of the most stupid features out there tbh

People have different wants or needs, you don't mind, others might prefer otherwise. Why does stopping people choosing to show themselves as not online matter to you?

[FrankJones]

The site suggestion "Better Privacy: Hide Game History, Online Status, and only Mutual Friends" has almost 2600 votes. Setting your status to invisible or offline is a common feature on many platforms, such as Discord.

I personally think it's one of the most stupid features out there tbh

People have different wants or needs, you don't mind, others might prefer otherwise. Why does stopping people choosing to show themselves as not online matter to you?

I concur with MackMook here. It makes zero difference to my life whether people are allowed to hide their online status, so, why not let them do it?

[Meeplelowda]

Why does stopping people choosing to show themselves as not online matter to you?

Expressing contrairian views about low consequence issues is attention-seeking behavior.

[ExaltedAngel]

People have different wants or needs, you don't mind, others might prefer otherwise. Why does stopping people choosing to show themselves as not online matter to you?

It's not that I don't mind — I actually hate it. I come from a group of people who play a game on steam and half of them are permanently invisible because they don’t have the guts to say no — or just unfriend the people who invite them and they don’t want to play with because "no that one is bad, that other is annoying blah blah" (it's not me, more like people outside our circle of friends). Then face to face, they pretend they don’t hate anyone and act all friendly to everyone which is disgusting to me. This leaves me and the other friends not affected by this bad form of spinelessness unable to see who's online and try to organize games with our friends unless we go and message them one by one privately. I know this is a specific situation and it's not related to BGA, but I think the concept is basically the same and it clearly explains my point of view on the matter — the option to go invisible to me not only is plain unnecessary to anyone — no one ever convinced me of it having any form of sense (if you want you are free to try, I will listen) — but it also encourage unpleasant behaviours like these.

"Only show online status to friends" is reasonable even though still unnecessary in my opinion.

Expressing contrairian views about low consequence issues is attention-seeking behavior.

Oh here comes the keyboard psychologist, I see, thanks for your valuable diagnosis.

[Cry Wolf]

Why does stopping people choosing to show themselves as not online matter to you?

Expressing contrairian views about low consequence issues is attention-seeking behavior.

The comment was of low consequence, too, yet you cried about it. Don't insult others for expressing an opinion on an issue that will affect all of us as that's worse than attention-seeking.

[FrankJones]

Why does stopping people choosing to show themselves as not online matter to you?

Expressing contrairian views about low consequence issues is attention-seeking behavior.

The comment was of low consequence, too, yet you cried about it. Don't insult others for expressing an opinion on an issue that will affect all of us as that's worse than attention-seeking.

Well, I'm curious.
How exactly does it "affect all of us" if some people have their online status hidden? How does that affect you in any way?