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I'm sure it's a feature intended for clique-building by American teenagers.
Or something. You know - A will nudge B, if B nudges C, but none of them will nudge D because she's not in the clique any more.

I'm sure it's a feature intended for clique-building by American teenagers.

This is, after all, the core LJ userbase.

I wasn't intending to use the nudge feature but yes, I know people through LJ I don't know any other way and have no other way of reaching. And not all of them have their comments sent to themselves by email.

Indeed. I don't see it as a bad thing. Not one I'm planning on using.

I'm just wondering why people are opposed to it in the first place...

Does 'nudge' also take into account people leaving comments? (It probably doesn't). I know several people who don't post very often, but do comment.

If I was implementing 'nudge' I'd show four metrics, to give a fuller picture of whether someone's abandoned lj entirely:
- last journal posting date
- last comment posting date
- last seen 'logged in' date
- last updated userinfo date

Indeed, that would be useful. Although I suppose if you don't read the journals upon which they comment then the user would appear abscent to you.

Of those I would consider the latter two as rude or invading my privacy. It's no one else's business but my own if I want to read and not engage

On the invasion of privacy front, I've always felt that the last journal posting date should show the date of the last entry that the user looking at the page could read -- so that if you've been filtered out of a user's recent posts, their last posting date won't appear to change.

That's entirely reasonable. Makes it bloody complex to implement though ;)

It doesn't make rendering a user's userinfo page any more complex than rendering their journal page.

Userinfo page:
- exampleusername
- Date updated: 2002-09-04 21:04:53, 175 weeks ago

Journal page:
- exampleusername
- Thursday, September 5th, 2002
- 12:04 am If you've ...

(okay, one's in local time and one's in UTC, but that's a trivial difference)

That is rather a giveaway, isn't it. Would you object if the nudge service was based on the last visible post, rather than last post overall?

That wouldn't invalidate ffutures' objection which he voiced in a comment to news, and to which I linked using the "bad mood" icon, below -- nor the argument I quoted to easterbunny in my reply to her comment below that. Further, it would allow someone outside a filter to nudge someone who frequently posts inside that filter.

Default to off, for everyone. Make it a tickbox in editinfo.bml. And then re-announce the feature, with instructions on how to enable it.

I suppose their argument would be that if you're an infrequent LJ user then you're unlikely to be aware of the feature or indeed activate it, thus making it pointless.

It seems most people consider it pointless in the first place, myself included. Would seem more effective to ask other people if so_n_so was ok, and if they'd heard from them recently, methinks.

I'm not saying people were complaining unneccessarily, by any means, I just didn't see what problems it was really causing. If would be fair to say that my query was well answered. :)

All depends what the terms & conditions when you sign up...
(personally I'd regard any site I was a 'member' of to at least have the right to say when I was last seen!)

There's a cogent argument in this comment.
There are others.

A lot of objections would have been resolved if:
- the opt-out had gone live at the same time as the nudge feature
- the opt-out was more accessible than via the admin console -- perhaps as a tick box on the userinfo page
- the default had been "nudges disabled", or (as a minimum) had defaulted to the same state as the "show your contact information" tick box, or the "receive comment notification emails" tick box.

To quote myself, writing elsewhere:
There's a new feature, "nudge". Suppose your house burns down, or you're run over by a truck, or your parents both die and you have to sort out their will. You'll be away from LJ for a bit, yes?
Well, the "nudge" feature allows all of us to add to your stress and workload by instructing the LJ servers to send you spam saying "you haven't updated recently".
"Disable nudges" allows you to opt out of that feature.

With a little bit of work I was able to nudge myself. I feel slightly dirty now.

There is no hope for you.

I don't GAF, but hey! the opportunity for more wank on LJ will doubtless be welcomed by many, so who am I to comment?