What determines the order of frequent poster icons in the topic list?

[woosting]

@Mittineague

The code needs to “pick one”.

At first it might look like because Jared_Needell has more recent post dates that he would be chosen.

The clue as to why not is in

GROUP BY t.id, p.user_id

With a little digging it can be found that the user_id’s are Jared_Needell 16325 pjv 1176

AH! That was the answer to my last question mark! So indeed it then is:

[OP] [top3-posters (when identical then "oldest member"): chronologically ordered] [last poster, unless OP then another frequent poster and op gets highlighted].

Thank you all for taking the time to dig into it and - moreover - explaining it to newbies such as yours truly!