Problem: Users hang around in chat room like ghosts

[Stefani Whelan]

Has anyone an idea what the problem might be?

We are using XMPP/Jabber on an internal server, and one day Jason was in the
chat room when he created an alias. Now every time we join the chat room his
alias is still there. 

We have two problems - one more annoying than the other:

1- They close the chat window, shut down computer. The next day boot, login
to Pidgin automatically, try to join the existing chat room, and can't. They
get "Conflict" because they show as still in it. I kick them out with /kick
and then they can join. I created the chat room, this has never happened to
me.

2. While in the chat room, John created an alias say, "Jason G." for
jasong at tcompany.com. When I join the chat room in the morning, it showed
John T. being in it, but he wasn't. John was able to join. Now it shows
"John T." *and* "jasong at tcompany.com". And it's been there ever since. If I
try to /kick him, I get "Unable to kick user Jason G." and "Unable to kick
user jasong". 

Obviously the first is more annoying, but solvable. Why are people sometimes
left in the chat room and sometimes not? Can it be server related?

Thanks for any help or ideas,
Stefani

Previous post:
Maybe I'm using it wrong, but I created a chat room for my dev group.

I clicked Join Chat - Typed the word "dev" into Room, and clicked Join. I
"Invite"d the other dev members to join.

That worked fine until the next day. Our procedures call for us to shut down
our PCs every night. The next day I clicked Join Chat, Room List, Find Room
and was back on. 

But when the chat room came up, it showed one of the other users as still
being in the room when she wasn't. When she tried to join, she got a
conflict.

I went online found something that told me how to kick someone out of the
chat room. Did a /kick username and she was able to join.

But the next day, again someone was showing in the room who wasn't there.
When I kicked him off, he was then able to join, but the list of users
showed him being there twice - like a ghost. One shows his name and the
other his email address.

Today it showed both of them, plus the ghost being there. I kick two of them
off, but the ghost is still there.
Does anyone know why we have the ghosts, how I prevent them and how I remove
the persistent one?

 

Thanks,

Stefani