User blog comment:Ducksoup/Why Wikia Evolves/@comment-26335203-20150621050201/@comment-20644-20150621061548

It's an interesting idea, but at the same time people value their privacy and may not want to have something that broadcasts whether they're online or not. When it comes to being able to interact with people, our bigger priority would likely be making sure we have the best possible communication tools so you can contact someone whenever you want, and they can reply whenever they want.

That's why our communication system evolved and we introduced Message Wall, to create a more intuitive communication system than talk pages (which were, funnily enough, a last-minute hack when MediaWiki was first created) so people could connect with other fans much easier.