I've notiiced tele parked on the a tive users page a lot. I think this thread made him more cognizant of that forum efeature and made him want to spend a lot of time there. The odd thing however is that he just sitting on that page. Hey tele you should read some posts and not be parked there all the tiime!
IF a forum is for communication then it's important to know what other people are paying attention to.
The latest posts feature lets you see who has posted most recently and where.
The who's online feature lets you see who is reading.
The latter is actually more useful when one considers the audience of one's posts.
The former is useful for knowing when to respond to posts.