-13

I have noticed that users do some activity somewhere and their last seen is not updated according to it. For example, they comment on a question a minute ago but their last seen will be like ~15 mins ago.

Can the last seen be updated as the user:

  • Requested his achievements (clicked on the recent achievements)
  • Requested for inbox (clicked on the recent inbox messages)
  • Opened any question
  • Clicked on the list of Stack Exchange sites (Button on the top right corner)
  • Requested the new questions (clicked on X new questions with new activity )
  • Commented somewhere
  • Answered somewhere

- Etc

Though this list won't be complete, it looks bad that the user did that activity right now but the profile says he was last seen a long time ago.

Improve this question
4
  • 3
    Probably someone that doesn't think this is a good plan. Thats how meta works.
    – Luuklag
    Commented Aug 13, 2019 at 5:26
  • 2
    Not my downvote, but I don't think it's particularly useful (see my answer for why) and voting is different on Meta: On posts tagged feature-request, voting indicates agreement or disagreement with the proposed change rather than just the quality or usefulness of the post itself.
    – Glorfindel Mod
    Commented Aug 13, 2019 at 5:30
  • 1
    Most users prefer to remove the "last seen", or at least make it less accurate, since it makes SE act more like social forum and harm privacy. See this for example.
    – Shadow Wizard
    Commented Aug 13, 2019 at 7:06
  • I don't know about "most" users. Most users probably don't care (or know) about last seen. Some users want to make it less accurate, but I don't see any request to remove it outright. Certainly not one favored by "most users". What we ended up with, years later, is far worse than even the example linked above.
    – TylerH
    Commented Oct 9 at 13:46

1 Answer 1

Reset to default
8

I think you're misunderstanding the purpose of the 'Last seen' indicator. Stack Exchange is all about the content, not the users, and the indicator is just a simple tracker which you can use to give you a rough idea if you can expect a response from that user. I'm sure you only have positive intentions but it isn't meant to stalk users to the minute.

I'm also pretty sure that some of the actions (e.g. posting a comment/answer) already update the 'Last seen' indicator, but the time displayed on the profile is invalid due to caching. Other things, like reading the achievement dialog or inbox, are stored at the network level and can never update the 'Last seen' indicator which is on site level.

- Glorfindel (last seen 2 hours ago)

Improve this answer
1
  • 1
    Some pretty slow caching going on here
    – Luuklag
    Commented Aug 13, 2019 at 7:17

You must log in to answer this question.

Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged .