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What kind of ninja skills allows for a user to post a question and have the timestamp appear later than when their profile says they were sighted?

timestamp on question later than last seen

How did this user post a question without being "seen"? Shouldn't any of the main actions (posting, commenting) update the last seen field in their account?

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  • No-repro. The user's last-seen is 10:46:05Z and the question was asked on 10:51:41Z. Both shows "1 hour ago" now.
    – kennytm
    Commented Nov 15, 2010 at 12:06
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    Caching? I know the profile data is cached (check your own now, I bet it doesn't say "seen 0s ago").
    – ChrisF Mod
    Commented Nov 15, 2010 at 12:15
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    @ChrisF: I assumed it would be a caching thing, but it's not client-side caching (forced reload doesn't fix it) so it could be altered at the server to update the "seen" field whenever a user performs an action that is publicly visible. Also, when I checked my profile it said "2m ago", even though I hadn't performed any public actions since posting the q. This suggests "seen" is updated on certain page views.
    – Andy E
    Commented Nov 15, 2010 at 12:19
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    @Kenny: doesn't that count as a repro? He was last seen 5mins 36 seconds before asking his question.
    – Andy E
    Commented Nov 15, 2010 at 12:19
  • I see your point.
    – ChrisF Mod
    Commented Nov 15, 2010 at 12:20
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    @Andy: I must be living in Australia :p
    – kennytm
    Commented Nov 15, 2010 at 12:21
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    You tried again to use the [ninjas] tag, I see.
    – Grace Note StaffMod
    Commented Nov 15, 2010 at 13:28
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    @Grace: yeah, tried :-)
    – Andy E
    Commented Nov 15, 2010 at 13:36
  • If you don't see them, how do you know they are ninjas?
    – user27414
    Commented Nov 15, 2010 at 16:05
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    Possible duplicate of Posted questions after last seen
    – Shadow Wizard
    Commented Dec 18, 2015 at 9:20
  • Closing as dupe of much newer post, but with a much better answer.
    – Shadow Wizard
    Commented Dec 18, 2015 at 9:20

1 Answer 1

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Last seen does not mean what you think it means.

It means the last interval check that was made; someone could have activity beyond that, up to the next interval check.

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  • 33
    What the heck is an interval check? And if "last seen" doesn't mean last seen, then why does it say "last seen" instead of "last interval check"?
    – Rob Kennedy
    Commented Nov 15, 2010 at 23:11
  • @rob in other words, last seen does not mean I have not seen you since I last saw you. It just means THAT was the last time I saw you. I might see you again in 2 minutes, too.
    – Jeff Atwood
    Commented Nov 16, 2010 at 2:26
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    @JeffAtwood - You seem to have some confusion about the meaning of the word "last".
    – Martin Smith
    Commented Oct 6, 2013 at 8:16
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    if we can have realtime question feed why can't user profile detail can be updated in realtime, it is clearly a bug and should have been accepted as bug OR change text to what Rob suggested
    – Jigar Joshi
    Commented Jul 12, 2014 at 18:53
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    @JigarJoshi this is known as status-meh.
    – Shadow Wizard
    Commented Dec 18, 2015 at 9:19
  • @ShadowWizard how is it called nowadays?
    – Wolf
    Commented Feb 15, 2017 at 10:07
  • @Wolf still the same
    – Shadow Wizard
    Commented Feb 15, 2017 at 10:08
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    @ShadowWizard interesting that this is tagged as [status-by-design], also the misleading wording in the user profile, quite sad to read this.
    – Wolf
    Commented Feb 15, 2017 at 10:12

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