Limit friendship offer spam

Hello

Not to look a gift horse in the mouth - I sure do appreciate some of the items in my feature-wish-list being knocked off (/13/a7/104417/1.html) but would it be possible to tweak some of them?

Would it be possible to limit the offline friendship offer spam? I'm getting offers from people I've never heard of that don't even bother to introduce themselves.

One of the things I suggested was making it cost L$1k to send an offline friendship request. This way, only people who really want to swap calling cards will do it.

While I'm here, can we make offline IMs cost money also? Frankly, I'm quite tired of the useless "hello r u there" IMs that fill up my IM quota, when I'm clearly not there. It would also be an incentive to have people read your profile before sending you an offline IM.

Of course, in this case, I think that the offline IM fee should automatically be refunded, if you reply to their message. (And replying to an offline IM should be free)

Not meaning to sound like an ass here, but having to pay money to send offline IM's and friend requests is quite possibly one of the most terrible ideas I've ever heard.

For someone who lives in a different time zone than some of his other online friends, it's a godsend to be able to IM or friend people I know on SL while they're not logged in, but if I was charged L$1k to do so, I'd probably just pack up my bags and move elsewhere.

Not everyone has thousands of L$ to fritter away on such things, after all.

What if the offline IM charge was something each user could set individually?

"The person you are trying to IM has set a charge of L$xxx to accept offline Instant Messages. Do you accept the charges? [YES] [CANCEL]"

You could keep bumping up the number until your IMs dropped to a manageable level. And, as a bonus, your score would indicate just how awesomely cool you are.

Judging by changes made to SL in the past, LL always seem to have an "all or nothing" approach; a user-set figure just doesn't seem like something they'd actually do.

I mean, if they did, no complaints here. But I seriously doubt it'd end up that way.

Only if I have the option of setting that to L$0 for people IMing me. I don't want to charge them!

Personally, to cut down on IMs, I'd suggest :
1) an "accept offline IMs" preference. If no, then they have to find another way to contact you. Perhaps by the email address listed in your profile?
2) an option to stop group owners getting a notice when people leave their groups. I own a 1300+ member group and the notices of people leaving are often enough they annoy me.
3) an option to either prevent people sending you 'distant' friend requests, or to automatically reject friend requests from people who are not in any of the same groups that you are. (thus, allowing people to send you them if you share hobbies, but not if you don't).

You can already request whether offline IMs go to email or not.

These should follow the same prefs as IMs.

I tell you what I *would* like - the option to turn off email forwarding of messages from SL. I don't care that my balloon has been returned to me from X,Y,Z (and if the tram rezzer plot runs out of prims I REALLY get spammed since it tries every two minutes) - I'd like to know about it when I get back into SL, but I don't care when I can't do anything about it.

On the other hand I do like to get offline IMs from real people sent to my email. If I'm asleep and someone sends me an IM, which happens quite frequently, I like to be able to respond during the day before I get back to SL. And there are even people who are in-world while I'm at work, too.

Out of interest I just turned IM-to-email back on for a few minutes, and I've ended up with twelve notifications from the tram rezzer. Somebody has probably put the chess pieces out again. It doesn't even tell me what the notification was, it just says "You have a message from Tram rezzer waiting for you in Second Life. Log in to see it." I can't bloody log in, I'm at work! Is this useful?

I agree that offline IMs can be annoying, but to propose that someone pay for being able to IM you when you're offline is preposterous. And especially an amount like $1000L!!

Clearly the very nature of being able to offer friendship from a distance or to someone offline is bound to have its problems, but no feature is ever going to be without its flaws. And you're never going to please everyone.

There are ways around all of this...turn off the email function, and decline those unwanted friendship offers.

I think we already have to pay to do enough things in SL, upload, rate, partner, unpartner...and I agree w/Argent, I would never dream of expecting my friends or anyone else that wanted to contact me to pay to do so.

Sometimes I wish so much of SL was not about money...I'm happy for all those that have RL businesses here, and are making real money. I respect all the designers, builders, & entrepreneurs for all their accomplishments, but what about having fun, relaxing, and socializing? The core of what SL is supposed to be, I think.

Have you checked the rate at which those things draw money out of the economy compaired to the rate stippends put money IN?
Sinks total (August):
30,048,287
Sources total (August):
82,087,487

Just over 1/3. For a balanced economy we need that ratio to be around 1/1.

I'm not a fan of offline IMs costing (unless it's a user set amount which can be 0), but offline friend requests: sure. Make those baby's cost. I've gotten ONLINE friend requests from people who've never said a word to me--IM or general chat. Now that they don't even have to stand next to me while I'm online makes the problem JUST THAT MUCH WORSE.

I think instead of a flat-out $1000L charge for a distant friendship offer, perhaps a $1000L deposit for doing so, which is refunded if your victim, er, target says yes.

Only if the amount of stuff to buy and the number of people buying stuff stay constant. Note that the Linden has actually strengthened against the dollar recently.

I think there should be new sinks, but they need to be NEW sinks. New features. Now that LL is selling on Lindex, they should be more than willing to implement features that allow them to sell more. But, damn, make them proportionate. *one* L$10 annoying sound effect replicated over the grid is far more of an impact on me than 100 friendship requests.

Heck, make remote friendship requests cost L$10, no refund, if you want to save the money you can offer teleport for free instead. Or just wait for them to come online...

Yes you can, but:
1) if you say no, then you get IM capped and loose messages.
2) if you say yes, then you get crapflooded with messages you're not interested in, each of which shows as a new mail.

"Recieve offline IMs" would be more useful if it was split up, say, into :
If you are offline :

* and you recieve a notice that one of your objects has been returned :
** EITHER : end it to your email
** OR: save if for viewing when you log back into SL
** OR: delete it

* and someone wants to send you an IM
** EITHER : allow them to and save it for viewing when I log back into second life
** OR: allow them and forward it to my email
** OR: stop them and display the error that I have chosen not to accept IMs while offline]


One question: why?


SL isn't a balanced economy, and it isn't meant to be.
It's a GROWING economy - all those new people joining SL
Thus, the amount of availible L$ has to increase each month - to satisfy demand by new players.
Therefore, the ratio isn't 1/1 and shouldn't be.

((disclaimer: I am NOT an economist, this may be wrong))



Option :
* Allow people to offer you friendship without being near you?
** yes
** no

I'm not an economist either, and I understand that there is an increasing source of L$ for every new player, however with each new content creator those players also supply a sink of L$.
Unfortunately the sink isn't large enough to counteract the source, so where we have a 1/3 economy NOW we may have a 1/4 next year, or a 1/5 depending on how many new sources there are (hundreds a month?) compaired to the same number of sinks sucking out the same amount of money (which in the end gets SOLD back into the economy on Lindex, so it never really leaves and creates a one-sided flow of money: more and more meaning less and less).

I'd like it if they just fixed the message that gets sent when you request friendship remotely.



This made me sound quite demanding to some new friends when I was playing around with the new feature! Put a "requested" in there Torley!

Actually what would be a nice feature, since we have add a friend at a distance, is if someone requested friendship from a distance or when you're offline, there should be a field to say something, regarding that friendship request. Like "I was chatting with you at XYZ place, and didnt get a chance to do this while you were there" Like sl.me.com has, and likewise, sl.me.com actually requires you to give a reason if you decline a friendship offer. this would only be for at a distance/offline offers

But this is just me, I'm a *why* sort of person.

Personally, I don't even like the word "Friend" List, because 90% of the people on that list are not really friends, but more like acquaintences, and business associates. People meet you for 5 minutes and offer you friendship...or sometimes offer it w/o even saying Hello. Contact list would be a better choice, I think.

Maybe we should be able to categorize the people on the list, which I know this has been suggested before, just reiterating. Have Friends, Acquaintences, and Business. Have the ability to handle each group independently, as in what you allow each group to do. Maybe one day you only want business associates to know you're online.

Anyway, just some early morning ramblings from me.

Why should people be required to give a reason when declining friendship requests, but not when accepting them or removing existing friends?
IMHO the Lindens have better things to focus on than this, which can already be done using IM anyway

Splitting friends into categories, possibly with different permissions for each category (or group) of friends would be GREAT, though.

Now you're making me worry about those people when I hit the market. >_<;
"I don't eat spam." is what I say from now on.



How about this?
An General option checkbox for only people who are on your friend list can leave you offline IM messages.

But of course, have another checkbox for taking in offline friendship offer or not.

PS: Grand idea, Natasha! Just like AOL's IM buddy list, can't go wrong there.

The question I have to ask is....is it such a hardship to click "no" to a friendship request from someone you don't know?

Also, "pay per offline IM" would be terrible for business owners. I have a clothing store and my policy is people can IM me for refunds, or help in adjusting their prims etc. I get a lot of IMed questions when I'm offline about items.

Essentially, I'd be suddenly charging people to ask questions, or worse still, people would have to pay to request a refund etc.