i notice the order in which people appear in my "friends online" list changes from one page refresh to the next. this correlates with their activity, huh? people are moved to the top of the list every time they perform an action on the site?

it seems that way because people always seem to move to the bottom of the list just before they disappear, which i figure is the five minutes between the time they perform their last action and the time they show having logged off or gone idle.