In the upper right hand corner of every page is a “members” icon which, I assume, is meant to tell who is logged on at a given time. It is always disabled, every time I’ve tried it. Why?
Specifically, it says
I can’t find the message from Tuba but “Members” was disabled because of misuse by Trolls or potential misuse, can’t remember which.
Jois has hit the nail more or less squarely on the thread.
See here:
Will the members list be turned back on?
or here
Q about the members function
Oh, it seems that that icon is not what I though it was. I wasn’t actually looking for a complete list of members, I was looking for a list of members who are posting to the board right now. Just their usernames would be fine. It makes it easier to converse when you know who’s there. Is there such a thing?
For about 5-6 hours this new version of the board had a listing of who was signed on at the moment - it was turned off. There was a sign-in thread here for a while but with the turn over it probably is no longer accurate. There is a newbie sign in thread someplace that might help.
A few people have started who-are-you threads but I think these caused some friction.
Tough as it is, I try to use the user names no matter how long or off the wall. Sometimes a member adds his/her name to the bottom of the posts but that is the only way I know of to learn members name on-line.
Hi Arnold! I’m just filling in until you have time to help out!
Jois
Yes, APB9999, after the vB switchover there used to be a crawl across the bottom of the main Forums page that said who was currently signed in, but a number of people strongly objected to it, mostly people who were posting from their workplace and didn’t want co-workers (or bosses) who were also members to know that they were posting, so it was turned off almost immediately.
Do I win a prize for that sentence?
Jois, I don’t think that thats what APB9999 meant. Say that him and I were having a conversation in one of the threads. He knows that there’s a user “Chronos” on the boards, and he may or may not know more detailed information about me as well. What he wants to know here, though, is if I’m currently sitting at my computer spending my time on the Straight Dope rather than programming like I should be. As others have mentioned, that was once possible to determine, but it’s been disabled.
Also, from what I’ve heard in previous threads, the “Members List” option took a lot of system resources and slowed everything down.
There’s just too damn many of us. Imagine the day when we can organize our “Million-Doper-March”.
Well, okay, maybe “Ten-Thousand-Doper-March” will be a tad more realistic…