Well, yes those actions do activate a user. I'm trying to find a more passive way of it showing people since it doesn't just show people that pass through the home page.
I just turned back on the everyone is auto idle, and clicking that doesn't make them show as active? So I guess that's the next thing to look at? Or Is there any other way to get them to show more passively?
It just seems with the old shoutbox by someone else it would show people that were just on the home page, so people were more likely to say hello even if those people had already moved onto a page (but generally ended up coming back to the home page at some point and then join the conversation)