What is the significance of the color of the dot appearing next to the poster’s name within a post?
I think this has been covered before, but I’m too lazy to look it up.
It’s your online status. Green means you’re online, blue-gray means off line. Red means you’re invisible, but only you and the mods see that. Everyone else sees the blue one.
Yeah, I asked this very same question before and got the very same answer.
“African-American” dot, please.
Sub-continent Indian. Please.
This has now come up often enough that I’ve added it to the Beginner’s Guide to Glossary of Terms, so we can just reference it in future.
If I do a mouseover of the button, it tells me that the person is either on or off-line, too.
A subtle but important clarification.
The user may in fact be online but not signed in to the SDMB. The green light only indicates a user who is signed in, and not whether the user is online or reading the Dope.
I have a one button clean-up that clears cookies, passwords, and internet clutter that I hit a couple time a day, because some web sites (not the SDMB) add so much crap and cookies that it will slow things down. So I might be reading for hours, but usually will not sign in until I have something to say.
Hitting clean-up button, but I am still here.
Good point. I’ll also mention that, if you don’t sign out, but stop clicking anything (like thread links), your status will remain “online” for 15 minutes.
Also, when you hover your mouse over it, it will tell you what it is.
It also works like a peephole eyepiece on a door. If you get close up to it, and look in with one eye, you’ll see the user on the other side.
Be careful. Sometimes they squirt water into your eye. I learnt the hard way. And if you try it in the Pit, it could be other liquids.