It's definitely a good idea, TT, but it's been made several times before, in a number of variations. Your variation perhaps goes too far in being too detail-focused.
I liked best the proposal made by Nivlac back in December 2008. (I've already quoted it here.)
To see only GREEN and GREY dots in your friends list is a bit boring (and quite misleading!), isn't it? So, Nivlac proposes the following, and it's a great idea:
- GREEN dot indicates a player is currently online, but not playing a round, willing to play, but not actively seeking for fellow players right at this moment (perhaps he/she is posting useless rants to the forum, whatever!
). Since a player with a GREEN dot is willing to start a golf round, it might be a good idea to send him/her an invite. (Another excelent recent proposal was to include a small text-box, perhaps limited to twitter length of 140 characters, in the dialogue window that pops up when you receive an invitation, so that you can decline an invitation politely, stating your reason for doing so.)
- GREY dot indicates, as it already does now, that you're offline.
- RED dot indicates that you're currently playing a round or that you are online but not currently available for play (due to work / real life, etc.); so, no one would send invitations to these players. Many WGT players leave the green dots on by default, even when they're in the middle of play, thus misleading others to send them invitations. In the improved system, the GREEN dot would automatically switch to the RED dot as soon as someone started playing a round or skill challenge, and would automatically switch back to the GREEN dot as soon as the round or skill challenge was over.
- BLUE dot indicates that the player is online and, right at this moment, actively searching for someone to play with. Send him/her an invitation, and you're off on the golf course! I don't dare to send any invitations to anyone in today's situation, where the GREEN dots misleadingly indicate a player's availability; in reality, these people are usually in the midst of their rounds and just didn't bother to switch their default status over to the GREY dot. (I bet many, perhaps even most WGT users haven't even noticed the option allowing them to switch their status.) And, to be honest, if they did so, that would be equally misleading, as then you could no longer distinguish between players who are online but busy playing, and players who are simply offline. Of the 2 evils, I chose the GREY dot as the lesser evil and have it activated all the time, even when I'm right here on-site.
Here's my expansion on Nivlac's original idea:
- PURPLE dot indicates that a player is online and, right at this moment, actively searching for specific players to start a round with. This colour of the dot would be useful for those of us who, like myself, have joined WGT tournaments organized independently from the main site, such as the ladders fabulously maintained by Mark Holliday. Although I did join these ladders, I find myself unable to play a ladder match with anyone, since it's difficult to spot whenever another ladder participant happens to be online right here at WGT.com. And, my schedule is packed as it is; I don't want to plan ahead an exact time when to play a round of golf; I simply play when the occasion permits. I have dozens of friends in my list and spotting a ladder participant among them is next to impossible. Now, a PURPLE dot might go a long way towards pointing out those players to us. (They say, “communicate via IM software if you want to meet someone specific”, but I for one have always avoided IM software, as I find it to be too distracting and instantaneous, requiring immediate responses, which I'm rarely capable of giving due to being immersed in work most of the time.)
Nivlac's idea in his own words as posted in December 2008:
Nivlac:10.) Status: Available
In our profiles (and on the friends list), being available means we're online and nothing more. I'd like to see this expanded upon. When players are in a stroke play round or a skills challenge, their dot should be red and the status on their profile should read 'Busy'. When a player is actively looking for a multiplayer game, their dot should be blue and their profile status should read 'Available'. When a player is online, but not in game then their dot should be green and their profile should read 'Online.' You should also be able to manually change to 'Unavailable' when you don't feel like being bothered. When we hover over a friends picture on our profiles, a small text box pops up that contains their name. This box should have their name and their dot color/profile status so we aren't sending invites to people that are busy and/or don't wish to be bothered.
(PS: I trust Snaike likes my newest “wall of text” and its colour-coding; I was fondly thinking of him and his preference for those kinds of forum posts while picking the corresponding HTML colour entities.)