Chat room indicator

[Paul the Human]

I have been a member at a number of forum communities (most of them for amateur writing, but that's beside the point). I am not a coder, so I don't know how it works, but most of the indicators seemed to work like this...

Someone enters: (flag=ON)

Now it monitors that flag. If the person does not take action (e.g., type something) within a predetermined amount of time, (flag=OFF). That way, it does not count the lurkers, only the actively chatting people.