STALKING!

[Wreckage]

Besides the ability to replay games and learn, as previously mentioned, hiding your history helps those who cheat.

There have been a few times when someone does a suspicious play that doesn't help themselves and gives the lead to another player. It's nice to be able to glance at their friends list, and if they are friends and play a lot together, at least I can write a note that they are probably cheating and avoid them. Sometimes, their history gives them away on other ways too.

If all their info is hidden, then cheating is much harder to detect.

[FrankJones]

Besides the ability to replay games and learn, as previously mentioned, hiding your history helps those who cheat.

There have been a few times when someone does a suspicious play that doesn't help themselves and gives the lead to another player. It's nice to be able to glance at their friends list, and if they are friends and play a lot together, at least I can write a note that they are probably cheating and avoid them. Sometimes, their history gives them away on other ways too.

If all their info is hidden, then cheating is much harder to detect.

Agreed, but isn't that a separate issue? I wasn't talking about hiding one's game history - that can be viewed whether the player is online or offline. I was only referring to people wishing to not have their online status show offline / online. BGA could grant people the ability to hide that piece of information while still keeping the open profiles that make it possible to study and review games of top players (or any players) for whatever purpose. (Which I like, and I hope they keep as is.)

[Wreckage]

Frank, I think I agree with you. Being incognito seems fine. However if you're playing games, when those games are finished they should go into your history immediately whether you're incognito or not, imo.

It's also helpful to see when someone was last online. If that is hidden, you might message a friend a number of times, and wonder why they aren't answering you. But if you can see they haven't been online for a month, that helps.

[FrankJones]

agreed.

I had an opponent not making a move, but I saw in the profile "last online 3 weeks ago", so it was an easy decision not to kick the player for being out of time. Obviously, something in life came up. But without the "last online" or a completed games history, I would have probably kicked the player.