Staring into space is what I do when thinking. Lots of my job is thinking. Maybe that's why folk ignored my busy indicator.

Staring into space is when I am busiest of all.

There is a lot of space to stare at!

Nobody will mark oneself as not busy, either because the management might be taking note or one truly doesn't make time to be open to more work.

It looks like to me that due to previous solutions, people try to improve upon in the same domain. May be the premise of the solution is wrong.

That's easily solved: make that either be "interruptible" or an indicator if you are in "deep focus" or not.

However, one does not always plan in advance to get into deep focus, so I don't really believe this problem is solveable in a useful way. Basically, we need to learn to regain focus quickly and push people away when busy.

Also, async interrupt methods are great when used properly: don't you hate it when someone pings you with "hi" or "hi, I have a question" or similar and waits for your response? Good practice is to ask a full question which allows the other side to respond when they can without interrupting.

You'd need to have it be host specific. Stack overflow? You're researching a problem and still might be elbows deep in a problem. Bluesky or FB? Not so much.

What if your developer community is in those spaces, or you work for them though?

I was being glib and using this as basically a way of illustrating how this isn't really a practical solution. I know when I'm working hard on a difficult the "endless googling bizarre behavior" is when I'm least ready to help field ad hoc requests.