Taking a wild guess, I would say that the site records the timestamp of the last time an authenticated user (i.e., via your perlmonks cookie) requests a page from the site.

It then displays the the list of users whose timestamps of last visit are less than an certain amount, something like 2 or 3 minutes... I not sure of the exact cut-off point. tye would know! (later: chromatic tells me it's three minutes).

Note that certain chatterbox clients trigger false hits. framechat is one. You can fire it up and walk away, and you appear to be present, even though you are doing Real Work in another window. On the other hand, java chatterbox is a stealth client. You can be connected all day, and never have your name come up in the Other Users nodelet.

I suppose it is because it fetches the Chatterbox ticker without sending along your user cookie, whereas framechat does.

--
g r i n d e r

In reply to Re: "Others lurking around the monastery: (15)" - How does this work? by grinder
in thread "Others lurking around the monastery: (15)" - How does this work? by NodeReaper

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