UESP Forums

Something happened while I was posting, and now whenever I log out, it still says I'm online. What the hell?
Can a mod fix this, please?

You're listed as offline right now.

You stay online for 5 minutes after you leave or log out.

Just to clarify what Matt is saying, almost ALL registered sites you have to log in at will do much the same thing. They ALL operate on their own individual timeout policies. UESP's timeout is 5 minutes. Any timeout policy in any multi-user environment serves three purposes...

1. Automatic Logout: EVERY multi-user system has a limited number of "login slots" for users. I don't know how many slots UESP has, but it'll probably run into the 1000's. If everyone forgot to log out, and the system didn't log them out automatically, ALL slots would quickly be used up and NO-one else would be able to log in. Therefore, any user who has forgotten to log out is always logged out automatically if they don't return within N minutes. This automatically frees up slots for other users, also saving the administrators a lot of work constantly freeing slots manually.

2. Login Avoidance: If you temporarily leave without logging out because you're restarting your PC due to a lockup or crash, or for any other reason, your logged-in status persists for N minutes which saves you the hassle of having to manually log in again. Many systems will recognise you as the same user by your IP address and login Cookie.

3. Reports Avoidance: Even if a user DOES log out manually, their logged-in status still persists for N minutes. This prevents users seeing other users going off-line and on-line again like yo-yo's, and reporting it as a "problem with the system". This in turn saves the administrators a lot of work dealing with unnecessary reports.

In short, the timeout policy is not a problem, but a courtesy extended to everyone.