This forum has had this feature from day 1, it was there two years ago when you registered and have since made 500+ posts. Now you want to say it invades your privacy?
1. The previous thread
you referred to shows it was enabled and being used earlier this year, so obviously it was recently turned off and active before that.
2. If I wasn't aware before that this was going on (and I didn't know about the real-time who page), does that make it alright now I am aware? Of course not - just because you get away with something for a while doesn't mean it's acceptable. Maybe someone likes to use a particular racial epithet in their post and they do that for months before you notice. Are you saying you'd have to keep letting them because you didn't call them out instantly? I suspect not.
2a. Maybe I didn't realise I could bring it up and ask. There has actually been something bugging me for a while (nothing to do with this, and I resolved it just last week after puzzling over it for months), and I was about to ask about that having figured that I
could ask. Before, I didn't think I could.
2b. I normally turn off stuff like this automatically (and enable email notifications, plus other usual things one does when one joins a new forum). If, indeed, the option wasn't available at that time I would have assumed that would be because the info isn't publicised. Later, when I notice it /is/ publicised (I wouldn't automatically be looking for it every page) I would assume that it didn't apply to me since I automatically turn that stuff off. I mean, I don't have a country or sig, so anything relating to those are not applicable to me so why would I bother looking at that stuff? If I then found the system had automatically allocated me a sig or country, that would be a big surprise because I would still be ignoring stuff I should have been looking at. Same with this - the option is 'don't show' as far as I would be concerned, so no reason to investigate anything. Then I notice I
am in that list, and raise the query.
So, not having tackled you about it in two years or whatever is perfectly legitimate with several pukka explanations (one of which is your fault), and doesn't in and of itself invalidate my query.