Refusing 'friends' invitation

I liken the Friends list to my address book. Yes, I mean a paper one, which I still carry. It tells me who my friends are, and how I can reach them. It doesn't tell when they are home.If I want to call RL, I make the call, if they are home and wish to answer they will.
In SL IM is like a phone to me. and the Address book/Friends list, shouldn't tell someone whether I'm home or not. Same with the groups membership. There is no need for an online notification there.

I guess that brings up the whole issue of sometimes just not wanting anyone (or certain people) to know when you're online, period. I like the phone-analogy. With call display

Has nothing to do with being friendly or not. It has to do with accepting from someone you don't know and why should I or anyone else be forced to do so? Because someone wants it? Many times as many of you are aware you'll receive an invitation from someone who hasn't said one word to you. You don't even know if this person is in the same room with you or not.

I've done things for total strangers in sl where then they will send me an invite to friends list where I'll tell them I don't accept from people I don't know. Most seem to understand this.

Would anyone accept giving out their phone number or address to a total stranger on the street? This is sl but it's very similar in concept.

Believe it or not my list is quite large.

And it is a simple matter of un-checking that notification if you don’t want them to know when you arrive or leave in-world. The only way to not see their arrival or departure is to delete them from your friends list (unless of course they unchecked the little eyeball too.)

I have several women friends that seek me out in their calling card list...even when I tried to remain invisible...hell I know I am not THAT popular... it's not as bad as it used to be, I am now down to no more than two at a time wanting something when it used to be 5-10 a time...It does pay to clean out the friends list from time to time, though in some cases it doesn’t matter what you do...short of muting them, they will seek you out and find you.

Flattering doesn't get you on my friends list, either share a poseball or accept your losses... *grin*

We should compare lists...NOT! Mine needs a serious cleaning out right about now...thanks to this thread, I am re-thinking who several of my friends are or aren't. (Claire, and the forum bunch of course will stay in my friends list...hI!)

I usually accept them, unless the person has been really creepy (blind friend invites, say strange things), then if I don't hang out with them after awhile I trim them out.

personally I wish they'd called it a contacts list, the whole myspace concept of friendship by just talking to someone once is kinda silly to me. friends are people I spend time with, check up on, and generally care about their well-being...

but I don't mind accepting, if they become a friend, great, if they become a close friend I even enable visibility, if not, off the list they go... if they use the contact point just as a way to send blind TP invites / spam, or I just really don't spend time talking to them, poof off the list the go.

I do make a habit to write some notes about the person in their profile (like were we met, what we talked about) so that if I don't immediately remember why they're in my list I can just check... then I can strike up a conversation, with something besides "hi, you're in my friends list... who are you?"

I guess it goes back to the early days when SL was a bunch of shiny, happy people holding hands.

~_^ but oh so true!

Oh I know. I've logged a lot of hours on The "N"

I immediately envisioned a bunch of AVs, sitting around a camp fire, singing Kumbaya.

This Thursday night, my place, but we won't be singing Kumbaya New notice with landmark to be sent out again shortly.

I rarely accept Friendships unless I have know the person for a while, had some meaningful conversations, or, know that I can trust the person because that person is known to me through another person I'm already friendly with.

My friends list is very lean. I dislike getting IM'd constantly by people just saying "hi". I recently made the mistake of allowing my neighbor on my list, and now he's bombarding me every day with little chit chat. I finally had to just flat out say to him, I'm not going to answer you, if I"m busy, ok? I put him on to be neighborly; I had ulterior motives for doing it, so I won't be taking him off but, I am regretting just not saying "calling card" like I usually do. Of course, it still beats him walking over and just popping in

I also like the analogy of it being like a telephone. Are you calling me up to say something necessary? Do you want to do something? Friendships are deeply important to me, not something casual. I wouldn't dream of asking for friendship with someone without giving it serious thought, and really wanting to have contact with that person and I certainly wouldn't abuse the priviledge of having it. I expect the same. The calling card, is a better option, until you know someone and I have no problem telling anyone this. Strangers in particular, are turned away cold. I just decline. If it is someone I've had a brief conversation with I just say that I'm sorry, I don't accept friendships from people I barely know, but thank you.

I will, however, be happy to help someone who IM's me with a request for help, out of the blue. Several people in the Cartel, for instance, now and then have asked for help in finding something I've mentioned and I've been more than happy to stop what I'm doing and take time out to meet up with them. And, have developed some friendships this way, and then put them on my friends list.

It can be tricky. I have deleted people after a while, never felt bad about it. Most friendships, tend to go nowhere it seems. I do keep the calling cards, you never know. I have wanted to look some people up again for reasons, like the one women who had a fabulous lion avatar, that a few months later I was curious where she got it from.

Funny, this just came up for me recently. As a result, I put a little statment in my profile that says, "sorry, I do not accept offers of friendship if we've just met" or something like that. I actually saw that in someone else's profile and thought it was a good idea.

I've found this is more comfortable for me that outright declining or saying no. A few people have commented or asked questions - then I explained my opinion about what 'friend' means to me, which is the same as the OP. It works well for me and I don't feel like such a bi-otch.

The only problem there is that it's usually new people who make those friendship offers and most don't think to read profiles it seems.

You know what Brenda, you're right. I've noticed that the newbies still offer, it's the ones who've been around for awhile who bother to read it.

i have a habit of accepting all friendships i get offered. My friends list is far too long and most of the people on it have the online notifications off. I really need to clean it out.

I did have a line in my profile saying that i don't accept friendships unless i know you, but i took it out because obviously no-one read it. i don't like rejecting offers because often it is newbies who just want someone to help, which is why i keep them on my list.
but then i suppose not telling tem tat some people find it bad manners to offer friendshiop to everyone is not exactly helping them either.

its hard for me to know what to do.

Heck I have been turned down by a resident who visited me in rl to added as friend....
they said they disliked all the friend list pop ups. Lot of people when they are here are busy creating or working a business and don't want friends. I figure I was either annoying to the person or she was too busy but wanted to met me in real life perhaps curious because we have met in passing in other groups and once she met me found me too "annoying" to interact with in future.
Usually what I do is I add people who want to be friends and if I don't hear from them, or other various reasons that fit,etc I remove them.

I decline the gawking friends' list who knows! who they are! list send.
Pressed, I tell most randoms I don't keep a friends' list,
which is always really funny their reaction.

So long as the newbie isn't looking for teh sechs, I accept all newbie friendship offers. I don't see how people can resist them, some newbies are so excited, so refreshing! You find one with a great attitude and it's just a blast being around them.

Most of them, you never hear from again after one or two conversations, and they can be safely deleted after a few weeks.

Ah - the age old dilemma of being offered friendship by people one barely knows.

When I was new, I pretty much accepted all offers (not wanting to hurt any feelings doncha know), then over time began pruning when my friend's list included names of people I had no earthly idea who they were.

New policy: If I get offered a friend request out of the blue (ie. no conversation with the person, don't even know who they are) - declined!!

If I've just met someone and we've spoken a bit and they offer friendship and they "seem" a good sort - will accept and after, oh, a couple months or so if there's been no contact, prune them.

As someone else mentioned, I prefer to keep my friend's list to, well...friends.

Here's two recent occurrences re: friend's list that were fairly amusing:

(1) I got a spam invitation out of the blue to attend some event - the type I would NEVER go to and anyone who is a friend of mine would KNOW I would not be interested in. (Just to be clear - it was not from ~anyone~ who reads these boards *smiles*) I was floored as the name on the invitation was no one I knew. I later looked through log chat and found it was sent by a person who *had* been on my friends list a loooooonnnnnngggg time ago, but who I had pruned off my list an equally looooooooong time ago. I guess the person was spamming via use of calling cards.

(2) This gets into a bit longer story, but suffice it to say that I was deliberately and quite rudely insulted by someone I have seen at a place of common interest but had never really spoken with. I called him on his rudeness and left. Next thing I know, I get a friendship offer. Ummmm....HUH?!?!?!?! I really wish for that one there was a place one could write just WHY I was declining the so-called "friendship" offer.

can ya see the pop up for that?
you press decline and a pop up comes on with these reasons:

i dont know you
you're creepy
you're rude
you dress funny etc etc,

i should create a jira, but knowin LL, they'd actually do it..:/

The power of words.

I think if it were called: "Contact Directory" instead of "Friends List," people wouldn't be so concerned about it.

Okay now for my Flower Child response to this issue. I love people. I also think avatars are so adorable when I'm in-world, I'd never dream of a declining a friendship offer. To me it would feel like kicking a kitten.

I do go and clean out the list occasionally, just to make it more manageable. But I just don't see any reason not to add someone.

lol "I'm shallow you're ugly." "Nice ALT." "I answered your question/s Newbie, I don't want to be conjoined twins now."

Love it, Maggie! On IRC when someone was kicked out of a channel by the OP (channel operator, not Original Post ) there *was* a place where a reason could be typed. And some of those got interesting...lol.

I'm making note of this one for those 'special' guys - the ones that want sex and then immediately offer friendship when you decline the sex.