Branch: We're not planning to support this yet as students could possibly abuse the system if they have the option to go incognito. It also misses the whole point of the presence feature. Instructors and TAs want to be able to view when their class is online in order to help them.

Duong Nguyen: That makes sense, but I think that students should have a right to privacy just as much as anyone else. I'd like to see when my professors are online in order to get help, but I understand there are times when they may want to appear offline. Students should be afforded the same right.

Branch: I completely agree. Privacy is our number one concern here at Campuswire, but we haven't come up with a use case for students to use incognito mode that does not abuse the system. We would need to think more about this.

Duong Nguyen: How would appearing offline be abuse? (genuinely curious)

Branch: For example, students could be online and turn on incognito to pretend to the instructor that they were not online (thus, didn't see the announcement, message, etc.) Another example would be students using Campuswire during an exam to cheat. If they had incognito, they could just appear offline and instructors would never know.

Duong Nguyen: What about a compromise: "Appear offline to other students"?

Branch: How would this be useful to the user or to the other students?

If students can view that other students are online, then they know that their questions will be answered quickly. But if everyone is in incognito, it defeats the purpose of presence.

Duong Nguyen: It wouldn't be "useful" in that sense, but it would allow for privacy. Honestly, this is the only site I've ever encountered that has a required "I'm online" indicator. Also, it doesn't do that much good, as even with a bunch of students online, that doesn't necessarily mean you'll get a quick answer... and you'd probably post your question regardless of how many are online.

Branch: Hmm, maybe we can do something like "Away from keyboard" presence. Where the user is still online, but notify other users that they are not available to respond

kevin destin: We are going to bump this up on our roadmap. This should be done within a month or two.