little tubes under our names

[phsyconoodler]

Ok,I'm a dork,but humor me.What are the little tubes under our names for and why do some have more that others and some are larger and some are small.After 6 years I should know,but I only have so much time between two jobs,a daughter,an ex and my cat.

[John]

Number of tubes is related to how many posts you have.

The size doesn't matter. 

[Fresh_Start]

Number of tubes is related to how many posts you have.

The size doesn't matter.  

This probably belongs in the Off Topic area but...

Why are John's tubes glowing and physco's are squat & green?

Also, I think the "Level" number directly relates to post count.

Edit:  I've got 4 glowing tubes but fewer posts than physco so what's up?

Cheers,

Chip

[RicharD]

Glowing tubes means you're on the site right now, or have been within the past 15 minutes IIRC.

[PRR]

The software default is stars; Doug replaced the image with a tube.

Glow means this person loaded a page recently (i.e. is probably "online").

The number of stars/tubes is post count with thresholds like 1, 10, 100, 1000.

However a "membergroup" can have different thresholds.

We are all regular members, however phsyconoodler is also in a membergroup (a business section not visible to regular members). I would GUESS that somehow the stars/tubes thresholds for the membergroup are not the same as for regular members. I can't imagine why. Best guess is that the standard thresholds changed (either at Doug's whim or in a forum software update) and the membergroup thresholds didn't (or vice versa). SMF has a bewildering array of poorly documented administrator options, and it is easy to overlook something.

[EL34]

The image explains it.



All regular members have the same blue tubes
The more post, the more tubes you have.
It takes 5000 post to get into the 5 tube club.

Then there are the groups that do not rely on post counts
admins, moderators and the SMG group
Those groups will always have the same number of tubes

The tube colors are just me messing around in paint shop pro