How long does it take before I'm automatically logged out?

It seems sometimes the posts are all marked "read" when I haven't done anything for a while. Actually, come to thik of it, I'm still logged in, but it's all marked "read"

Pete

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PJE

There's so much I don't know about astrophysics. I wish I had read that book by that wheelchair guy.

IIRC, 15 minutes.

Sorry...IIRC? Don't know that acronym...

Pete

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PJE

There's so much I don't know about astrophysics. I wish I had read that book by that wheelchair guy.

"If I remember correctly."

Can we get that changed, 15 mins isn't all that long to read a page of posts and come up with a reply, especially if you are looking up referances and dealing with other things. The next thing you know, you've dealt with one thread and then lost all the other unread posts. Several of the boards I am on hold all unread posts regardless of if you log out or not, can we go to that system, it'd make things soooooooo, much easier to figure out what you have read and what you haven't.

__________________
Howling from the Shadows

It must be fun to lead a life completely unburdened by reality. --- JayUtah

You can't reason an irrational person out of an irrational belief. --- Noclevername

Apollo: The History and the Hoax
Enter the World of Athran

I second that motion!!!

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Any day you wake up on "the right side of the dirt" is a good day.

T. Anderson

There shouldn't be any kind of timeout. I think this has something to do with your cookie settings. What browser are you using?

__________________
Fraser Cain
Publisher
Universe Today - Free space news delivered by email every weekday.

I am using Windows XP Home SP2, Netscape Browser 8.0.2
I also have IE 6.0, but I only use it for websites that have issues with Netscape.
I clear cookies once or twice a week.

Another board I frequent does not mark a post as "read" until I actually click on that post. If I log out before I've read all the posts, the unread posts will still be marked as "unread" when I log back on.

__________________
Any day you wake up on "the right side of the dirt" is a good day.

T. Anderson

Fraser, I encounter the same thing peter eldergill mentioned in the OP. If I'm idle for a bit while logged in to the board, I return to discover previously unread posts become marked as read.

XP Pro SP2, Firefox 1.0.6.

I've got win98 and am using IE 6.028

__________________
Howling from the Shadows

It must be fun to lead a life completely unburdened by reality. --- JayUtah

You can't reason an irrational person out of an irrational belief. --- Noclevername

Apollo: The History and the Hoax
Enter the World of Athran

I haven't seen a timeout on read post but in another post it was mentioned that some anti-spyware programs delete cookies behind your back, perhaps this is part of the problem?

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"God bless thee, my son; I will give thee the greatest jewel I have ...
"The end of our foundation is the knowledge of causes, and secret motions of things; and the enlarging of the bounds of human empire, to the effecting of all things possible."Trying to make sense of computers, The Error Log.

I should probably investigate and verify first, but... when you talk about "read" posts, do you not mean not "new" posts.

The board seems to keep track of threads with new posts since your "last visit" (see top right). If you are idle more than 15 minutes, the "last visit" time will be updated to the time of your last activity.

This can be annoying if you use the "New posts" feature to keep track of things. When there has been a day or so since my "last visit", I use the feature and open perhaps 50 threads in tabs, and read them through. This will take some time, during which there has probably been new posts. So, if my "last visit" stays, I can just use "New Posts" again, and see all updated threads since the last time.

Now, say I last visited 10:00 PM yesterday, and use "New posts" at 10:00 AM today, opening up a lot of threads. I read and I'm "active" (replies, next page etc), until 10:45 AM, when I take a break or doesn't do any "activity" until 11:05 when I make a reply. That was the last thread in my list and I want to see any new/updated threads since my last round. However, my "last visit" is now 10:45 AM, so I will not see threads created/updated during 10:00-10:45 AM.

This bugs me sometimes...

Quite right...I do mean "new posts" and I've never actually been logged out. On the other forums I've been to, as soon as I've logged out, "unread posts" were toruned to "new posts.

Is this what's happening here?

Pete

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PJE

There's so much I don't know about astrophysics. I wish I had read that book by that wheelchair guy.

Ditto;
This was discussed on another thread when the setting was 24hrs.
15 minutes made it much clearer, and the way that I browse the board, I don't have much problem with that.
Maybe if they can seperate logout time from this somehow (If possible)
BAbb worked much better with this (sorry for the whine)

[edit]Suggestion... If you know you're going to take a while on something, open up another browser, and refresh it occasionally.

One thing I thought of, but I haven't bothered yet, is to install a Firefox extension that let you set auto-refresh for a given page. Then you just need to set that for the index or something.

I've found that this "New Posts" feature is based on the computer you're using. For example, if I click the New posts button on one computer, it brings up a certain list of stories, but if I use another computer, I get a different list. It's somehow connected to your browser cookies, not stored on the webserver.

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Fraser Cain
Publisher
Universe Today - Free space news delivered by email every weekday.

You are right. There is a host of cookies stored: bblastactivity, bbthreadedmode, bbuserid, bbthread_rate, bblast_visit, vbcodemode, bbsessionhash, bbthread_lastview.

However, all of those expires a year from now. So, the timeout of 15 minutes is still determined by the server code. If it can be increased, I would vote for 30 minutes; that would probably solve most peoples' issues.

I think I'd go for an idle time of at least 2 hours if possible, that allows people to go and hve lunch or something without losing track of which threds they haven't read yet. Though I'd still like it is posts that hadn't been read weren't unmarked util the user does it themselves. On ApolloHoax I'm busy reading through threads that gave been inactive for a couple of days, but I still can pull the unread posts I did manage to get too.

__________________
Howling from the Shadows

It must be fun to lead a life completely unburdened by reality. --- JayUtah

You can't reason an irrational person out of an irrational belief. --- Noclevername

Apollo: The History and the Hoax
Enter the World of Athran