If automatic deactivation of witness nodes is to be reintroduced, a hardfork is necessary.
However, the witnesses (and anyone else presenting a witness list) could take care in the meantime to present the inactive witnesses as inactive as well.
Possible (drastic) measures such as automatically deleting votes for inactive witnesses must be discussed elsewhere and with more participation :-)
If automatic deactivation of witness nodes is to be reintroduced, a hardfork is necessary.
However, the witnesses (and anyone else presenting a witness list) could take care in the meantime to present the inactive witnesses as inactive as well.
Possible (drastic) measures such as automatically deleting votes for inactive witnesses must be discussed elsewhere and with more participation :-)
Hopefully the witnesses will step forward to make the needed changes.