By sorting the members, I meant in the membership roster area, where all members are listed. On the HUGE tribes, it is a problem for moderators to find various members. If moderators could sort by recent activity, it would be easier for them to either boot trolls from their moderated tribes, or pass on the moderatorship to someone.

Also for the membership roster area, if the tribe number exceeds maybe 1,000 people, it could have the feature of listing the alphabet above the membership (at least for the moderator). Many sites sort alpha and allow a person to go to a letter of choice with the contents listed for that letter. Click on "C" to find Carolyn. Numbers have a place. And then symbols in general.
---

In addition to having the members show up as being active, I mentioned in another thread about members or moderators being able to turn off their avatar image for a specific thread. If it was made so that the image reverts to the question mark head, that would NOT show up in the grouping of active/participating members. That then gives the person a measure of privacy.

So that, if I just joined this tribe and wanted to be invisible to passersby, I set my preference for this tribe to not show my avatar image in the active members listing. And my personal image would show up as a question mark head in THIS thread. And in the membership roster, it would also show up as a question mark head.

It would look no different than any other question mark head. It would not attract undue attention that way, causing more people to click on the "person who is obviously hiding something" profile. It's a bit of privacy that would be nice for some circumstances for the user.

It's a measure of keeping people in line that like to push the limits in certain tribes, so the moderator has control over the image for their own tribe too. It doesn't have to be a "naughty" image either (wink wink nudge nudge). For instance, check this thread:
uspolitics.tribe.net/thread/...f8ac6b38

Why yes, there ARE three of the same images and similar names. Only ONE is the real one. It's like a Tribe "To Tell The Truth" game. The real one is the one with the Premium Star. Two were made to be annoying. And others are just goofing off.

So, the moderator could shut off the annoying impostors with their own controls. Poof. No confusing images.

I know that following patterns of abuse is easier if people aren't auto-unsubscribed. Here's what TOU COULD do with THEIR ability to turn off images site-wide for any particular user...

POOF, the fakes have their avatar image disappear (an image mute) from EVERYWHERE, just like that, with the TOU control. TOU could also "mute images" in the profiles, and even all images posted by them anywhere.

There are people that abuse posting in photos as much as they abuse posting in text. Stealing other people's avatars to create alts that fool other people, stealing other people's original content photos, putting up inappropriate photos in certain tribes.

The photo has not been DELETED, it's muted. For whatever level it has been done at.

Muted by the member OR the moderator in any specific tribe. Muted by TOU Gal over Tribe.net entire.

Similar things have been proposed for things like "My Friend's Blogs" and "My Friend's Photos", allowing any user to filter the incoming information. To "mute" someone who has prolific blogs taking up all the home page space pushing off the one little blog from the person who rarely blogs. Same for photos.

And I definitely prefer the term "mute" for ignoring members rather than "killfile". Like you can mute a TV if you need to chat on the phone. A nice selective filter.

@skooter

For a while I"ve been thinking retro and wanting to see tribe bring back the degrees of separation all over.. I really miss that.

Way back on a listing you could choose 1 degree, 2 degree, 3 degree, entire network... etc etc. Everything on the site was handled with degrees. Most of it got tossed out which was too bad. I think right around the time the avatars ere moved from the right to the left side of the page.

--S

You only know from the glance of the main page who posts. You don't know who is IN those threads.

Secondly, those images at the top of your tribe and this tribe have NOTHING to do with reading or visiting either tribe. You do understand that, right?

Those images are updated in every single tribe that a member belongs to WHEN THEY UPDATE THEIR PROFILE.

That's the ONLY reason those images are at the top of any tribe. It has absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with a person visiting the tribe. Nothing.

Change your avatar image, you pop in the top six. Change any info in your bio, including adding a period, you move into the position of the top six.

I want to be able to see (without having to check the most recent posts by opening each thread) who is participating. I don't give a hoot about the dimwits that constantly update their profiles to hog the six positions at the top so that we get the same damn people all the time, usually people that don't even participate.

Like OMG! Is it Bedouins Mother? : )

Ok, here's a thread that explains it at one point in time:
tribebugs.tribe.net/thread/7...97746a760

Sounds like there was something to do with proximity of other members to the current user taken into account as well.

Looking through old notes, here are some criteria that go into determining "activity":

1. Is logged in
2. Has a main photo
3. Account older than 30 days
4. Has posted within the last 7 days
5. At least one friend

One niner delta fox twat box humper dookie door

Up in Smoke.