Notifications in scrollback when a user activates or deactivates “away” about backchat HOT 1 CLOSED

4a1ce66 includes some work towards this, polling each channel for user statuses and then updating their userButtons when they go away / come back.

As for putting the status in the scrollback, I’m starting to wonder what the benefit is of historical away activity. If a conversation is happening in a channel, do I really want a completely unrelated line popping up, recording the fact that some unrelated person set themselves as away?

Thinking about it, the times I'm interested in someone's status are:

1. When speed of response is important, and I want a heads-up, before starting a direct message whether the ideal person is likely to respond quickly, or whether I should ask someone else / not ask the question at all.
2. When I'm mid-chat with someone and they're not responding – or someone's been mentioned and they've not responded yet. Knowing if they're “away” would help explain their silence.

Both of these can be achieved by displaying users’ current status in the sidebar. Neither of them require a historical record of "this user went away at this point and came back at this point" in the channel scrollback.

from backchat.