Dear Gentlemen, this monkey-talk is dandy
and while, sometimes, the 'Who's Online' is handy,
I have to say that, since it disappeared
(initially I did think it was weird),
I now prefer not knowing WHO is WHERE.
You write a post and see whoever's there,
because their name has got its small green ball
but do we need the whereabouts of ALL? :rolleyes:

Half an hour, and Ed receives his answer.
(Next time, Ed, request a cure for cancer.)

Very good, Edmund, but travel it further
 

Birds gotta fly,
Fish gotta swim,
But monkeys, my dear,
Gotta render Shakespeare.

I've written four nonsense poems since my maladroit suggestion hijacked this thread, and I can't stop talking in a jouncy iambic tetrameter with rhyming couplets. Flying monkeys are scary, especially typing flying monkeys. :) But monkeyshines aside, I find myself in agreement with Jayne's charming verse -- all things being equal, I'd just as soon not know who's online except for the green dots.

Ed

That information (who) is available anyway at the bottom of the Eratosphere first page. But it doesn't gossip about what they are doing. :p Actually, I don't miss it either.

As I mentioned in a note to Alex Pepple, I have found it a very useful feature for finding what others consider to be important or useful threads. The identity of the readers in interesting in a way but not essential. I like the standard setup, but if there were to be any change, I would vote strongly to retain the feature minus the indentities. That is, a guide to just "What Is Being Read At this Moment."

I would hate very much to loose that. It's a valuable resource to look at every now and then.

I'm glad my post #21 has brought us back to a sensible discussion of 'Who's Online' (though the monkey business was fun :)).

I see I'm not the only one who doesn't miss this function - could it even be construed as an invasion of privacy, perhaps? :confused: - though I agree wholeheartedly with Allen that being able to see the threads others are reading is a feature we wouldn't want to lose. I've found many interesting/fascinating ones that way, which I wouldn't have known even existed!

What do you think, Alex? How about Allen's idea of a guide to just "What Is Being Read At this Moment"?
"I would vote strongly to retain the feature minus the identities", says Allen also. So would I.

I agree with Jayne and Allen.

OK, Add my vote to Jayne, Allen and Michael but I'm not unhappy with it as it was so if it takes too much fix time, (time is money, money is important) I am OK with the old version too.

I like the way it was. I never heard anyone complain about it, so I'm assuming that no one really had a serious problem with it before. It's fun to check into "Who's Online" and find that the other ten members online at the moment are all viewing "Who's Online." And it's also useful to see that replies are being prepared for a given thread, which tells you that it might be worth checking the thread in the near future for further developments. Since many of us know many of us fairly well, and have our own opinions about each other's taste and insight, I think that names are indeed important. I never pay much attention to what the "Guests" are looking at.