This is non-compulsory, of course, but I've seen this other forums/MBs, so let's see if we find this useful.

When you first drop by the MB, you could post a reply here that says, "Logged in!" or some such, and when you're going offline, you can post "Logged out!" or something to that effect. No need to indicate the time, as the forum already shows that in the posts, like you all know.

It's the fastest way to know if your MB buds are online (if you're not instant-messaging folks here) and it's also a way to say "See ya" as well, when you log off.

Well, Sayo here, logging off for the night. Much love!

Questions of privacy aside, this may be something that can be rigged to show automatically via a cookie - several of the sites I use show messages on the lines of "Fred, George, Marcus Rowland, Harry, Ginny and four guests are looking at the site" when I look at them. That typically says who has looked at the site in the last five minutes.

At the moment I briefly check the site a couple of times a day (as in a 30-second look to see if there are new posts) - if I started to do this I'd probably be gone by the time anyone else saw the message. If posting a message or logging in ever became compulsory I'd probably stop looking at the site more than one or twice a month - it'd be too much effort.

I'm the same as Marcus, I am in and out of here so fast there is no way I would do that. And I don't log in and out. I stay logged in all the time.
Sue

Oh. It's just an experiment, that's all.

I stay logged in too, both on my laptop and on my BlackBerry, so that would be useless for me. And I honestly don't know how many people are looking for someone on the board as a means of communication -- I have a feeling people who generally talk to each other do it via alternative means, i.e. IM, Facebook, or, as some of us do, the L&C chatroom on IRC.