Saving Chat / IM Conversations

I find it a little disturbing from what I have seen so far in the SL Forums and in-world that an awful lot of people save all their chat / IM conversations.

Call me paranoid, but I am beginning to really watch what I say to others, seems virtual friends can turn into virtual enemies in a New York minute.

Do you?

I only save something if I know I might need it later (in the case of excessively snarky IMs).

But I've only done that once.

Why do people post poles with yes blah blah blah no blah blah blah rather than just yes, no and explain below? No I don't save everyday chat; but it has nothing to do with ethics. I save chat when it has useful information i.e. instructions in it and I hardly ever inform the other person. Capturing text for future reference is a feature of Internet communication.

I certainly wouldn't waste my time saving everything said to me. I'm well capable of defending myself and attacking others without needing to clutter my, or LL's, hard drives with a bunch of text files.

The only time I save conversations is when they are with clients seeking my services (see sig below). This allows me to review our conversation, address any items I may have missed while talking with them, and keep a history of interaction with the client.

With this said, I receive all manner of notecards from people capturing all kinds of amazing things. Most I toss but now and then, I keep one simply because the 'oh... wow' factor is off the scale.

Generally speaking, I think logging without consent is unethical. If not mistaken, it is also against the ToS. But since much of it happens 'behind the curtain' and the person(s) being logged are usually unaware it is happening, it seems rather difficult to enforce.

Considering its as simple as:

-CTRL-A
-CTRL-C
-Open New Notecard
-CTRL-V

Its probably safe to just assume that any conversations you have with folks are saved. Lots of other chat programs do that automatically - I'm surprised at the surprise here

If I'm discussing the terms of an agreement with someone, you can bet I'm going to notecard it. The other day, a friend was helping me understand Lists in LSL - I notecarded the convo for reference.

If anything, notecards are just for something for me to refer back to later, since we have no logging features in the weak chat implementation we have today, and my memory often sucks.

Well I have a terrible short term memory something to do with being Darko's neighbor....

I miss those brownies Paris always made...

Anyway, I throw stuff in notecards to help me remember stuff... then I forget about the notecards...


Oh yeah... and funny quotes... you guys say the damndest things

Yeah... a crux is that we can currently copy chats, we just can't do it automatically.

The flipside is, looking back, I'd easily be reminded of all the good things that happened to me, I have so many positive experiences. Negative experiences would just make me reinforce and attach to the happy moments!

Convo logging is a bog-standard IM feature.

I don't consider it unethical to save private chats. I frequently save them to remember details such as instructions for a custom outfit or URLs. Like Ferran, I consider the saved transcripts a private memory aid.

It only becomes unenthical when the notecard is passed to other people or published without the permission of the other party.

I don't save any chats or IMs. Not because it's unethical, but because I simply can't be bothered.

I don't bother saving chats/IMs, but I do keep notes on everyone so I know if I've met them before.

Same as Cienna and Aimee; saving is useful for meetings and discussions where lots of info was given out. For meetings it's good to go through and find anything that was missed in the chat traffic. Or for clients it's good to keep a record of instructions.

I rarely keep the chat though, I just paste it into a text editor and pick out anything I need.

No I don't cause I honestly can't be bothered... It's all just a bunch of white noise anyway

Oh yeah profile notes are great!

Especially for keeping the silly quotes associated with the person who said them....

A few people *cough*Flipp*cough* have helpped me prove there is a limit to how much text profile notes can hold

That says it all. Also because it is so easy to put things out of context. And it applies to just any IM/Chat thingy, not just SL. An automated logging mechanism would be very useful -- there's no way to prevent it in any case, and it's the USE that may be unethical, not the chat itself.