Completely hide online status?

Especially when the sentiment is echoed by a lot of people who use the "Voice is an option. If you don't like it. don't use it" line. I truly never understood the need for so many ways to show someones online staus, it seems obsessive to e. friends list, the website, the groups list. Even in the forum if you hide online status the little icon says "So and So has hidden their online status".

I personally don't care anymore who knows whether I am online or not. I ignore IM's I don't wish to answer, I don't even check my friends list, I just send am IM, if they get it they get it. But a lot of people have great reasons for wanting a true privacy mode, and there is no reason why they can't have it, if it isn't disruption to the program to make it so.

Telling people"just get an alt" when someone is bullshit. Every problem elicits a "workaround" or some hoop jumping. Even reporting problems requires hoop jumping , thanks to JIRA. SL is evolving , and you need better hardware to use it, fine. but even then, it seems there is more tweaking , fiddling and working around stuff each time a new viewer is released. I'm glad I can't use them. I just want to start the damn thing and play for an hour or so every so often. Turn off this, adjust that, recompile this, set that...ugh!

It makes sense though. In SL you are always present, because your avatar is standing somewhere in space. It is your virtual body. So even if it WAS possible to hide from everything (including scripts), there still a chance that the one you are hiding from bumps right into you.

IMHO that "hide online status" thing is totally pointless. There are ways to circumvent it. And not only that, both the friends list and the tracker scripts fail from time to time. That gives lots of room for speculation and misunderstandings.

I would toss invisibility altogether and instead, improve the busy/away/ignore system: Hide group IMs, appear busy only to people IMing you and still view local chat, appear busy to certain groups of people and so on.

Finally a post whose sense i can see.

I'd go for this.. I have no need to be completely seen as offline... Busy mode WOULD work great for me, IF it wouldn't go "ding ding" and show me that there's an IM waiting. I have no problem with using "Busy" and I do use it when I'm building or actually afk... my friends know that I'm really busy, not just "ignoring" them... but it really doesn't go far enough in giving me enough peace from the ding-ding... I wish ALL IMs would be hidden and you'd have to select a menu to see them.

If they were to improve the online status toggle, what I'd I really really really want... is *one click* to show online status (even the currently "imperfect" online status) for everyone on the Friends list. Sure, the "show offline" status thing isn't perfect, but it does work... Unless you have a LARGE friends list... then it's a total pain to turn on and off since you can only select 20 at a time.

Oh and stalkers may have an interest in preventing total invisibility, but people who are likely to "cheat" in relationships will have an interest in gaining it

This would be fine, if a person I know wants to try guess if I am online and then guess where I might be and they actaully find me, then I am fine to tell them I am busy in the normal way.

I am fine with that because that is how things work in RL too. If I cannot be contacted and they just pop around on the off chance, I could be asleep, I could be elsewhere, or I could just say "sorry I am in the middle of something right now".

The Key point being those types of interruptions are far less common than if some (in the SL case) knows you are somewhere around and insists on sending an IM even if you are showing offline and in the RL case unless you live really close by you would never drop by unannounced to another persons house if you could not contact them or had prior arrangement because it would be a huge waste of effort.

I must add that if it was not for the bugs that accidentally make people appear offline when they have not chosen to show that, I would consider it to be quite rude to IM me hoping I was actually just not showing for them.
Why? because a) I have decided not to show for that person for a reason, I have in effect wanted to appear offline to them and them sending an IM to me is not respecting my wishes that I want to be considered offline for them and b) they are assuming I am lying and even if I am it is no business of theirs to probe deeper.
Of course the issues with appearing offline/online when you actually set the opposite give the person IMing you a good reason to doubt your status for distrust of the system.

Is there a JIRA for this, by the by?

Not that I am aware of but I expect there is, I would be surprsied if there were not. Could someone with a clue post it for us?

kthx VV

That's why I dislike the whole idea of hiding. You can set yourself to hide, but it is still possible to find out, and then again, those methods to find out (groups, scripts) can fail too. All that creates an atmosphere of speculation, suspicion, distrust, stallking behavior and what not. It is really bad. Just drop invisibility!

I would like to see these options:

- Unavailable: Hide all incoming IMs and don't f... beep. Just show the messages as soon as you open the communicate window.

- Hide group IMs and show them only when you open the communicate window (oh please!)

- Away/auto away: Send an away message to the person and save the messages.

- Local only: Hide IMs but show local chat. Don't let IMs clutter up your chat screen.

- Friends only: Be available only to your friends.

- Individual alert sounds for groups IM, personal IM, friends IM, costum settings.

- Costum settings for the annoying "Donald Duck is online" popup. (If your list gets too long, this is so distractive you have to switch it off). Option to choose which people you want to be alerted of. Add an option to add sounds.

- Friends subfolders, busy options and alert options for each category.

No that is today's situation only, with a proper privacy mode that worked as designed (I mean IM clients can get it right so why not LL?) there would be none of that. You don't get these problems on IM clients, it just works regardless of how many users are present. Just like how LL cannot get credit card billing or web site access working as reliably as other companies, this is the same.

What I don't understand is why you are so against giving others the choices they seek? It is fine that you choose not to use it but to advocate denying others their choices just because you don't like it is selfish and wrong in my opinion.
Give each according to their wants/needs where it is reasonable to do so. This is a very reasonable thing to want and for once not technically impossible. There are no actual good reasons that have been expressed as to why a person seeking privacy in the system should not be allow to do so where it is possible.
The whole preventing stalking thing is rubbish, you will not prevent stalking by allowing everyone to see when you are online and where you are. It will only increase instances of it. How could it possibly do otherwise? The only distrust created by todays privacy options are because they don't work as they were designed, that can be fixed and enhanced. If this was another broken but useful feature there would be no question about whether it should be fixed but only a question of when.

Just so it is clear to anyone joining this discussion, we are not talking about making your av graphically invisible in front of anyone. Invisibility in this instance means that the system will not say whether you are online/offline or will allow you to appear offline to all detection methods if chosen. The exact implementation is fairly flexible in my mind and would have to be worked out as per any feature. The key feature is that anyone looking to see if you are online will not be able to get that information if you choose not to display it by any means.

I look at the Friends List as an address book. I have one in RL. It doesn't automatically tell everyone in it I am home, or not at home, or where I am. If my phone rings I don't have to answer it, and if I don't , my friends don't get suspiscious. I just don't understand the obsessive need to know where people are that has been programmed into SL. It's creepy. And I don't get why people are so against changing this to an optional feature, that they don't have to use, just like any of the other feature that have been foisted upon us.

QFT! I can only conclude that those unwilling to let people have their privacy where it is technically feasible to do so and does not prevent them from exercising their no privacy choice, have some nefarious agenda for doing so.

To be truly invisible would mean that your avatar would have to be "invisible" which I would see as a breach of the privacy of others. If your avatar is visible there is always a slight chance you run into the person you are hiding from. And bang, you get the same conversation: "What, you are hiding from me? you bad person.." *rolleyes*



I am not against it, I see a logical problem in implementing it. The only solution would be to seperate in-world avatar presence from login presence.



They could tp the to the places I usually visit (see picks) and see me standing right there. So what exactly is the point? If you want to be invisible, don't login, use an alt. If you don't want to talk to anyone just ignore them.

Good grief, nobody has been asking for complete invisibility at all. Just that the existing privacy features work properly and extend to not being circumvented by scripts, group display etc.
Go back and read where I address my views on being visible in front of people. I cannot be invisible like that in RL, I don't need it here. After all I can go home, put up banlines and if the existing privacy features work in *all* circumstances then I don't have to worry about any interruptions.
I will say it again, nobody is asking for av invisibility in front of others, so what is being asked for is 100% feasible.
The entire point is this, that if people cannot tell if you are online then you are less likely to get IM'd in the first place and so will not have to ignore anyone. It is such a small thing too.

I don't agree that you're hiding. Hiding implies some sort of right to know where you are. I can't think of one person I know in SL that would be put off by it, just as I wouldn't be. It's none of my business where you are or what you are doing.

People aren't asking to be invisible.

OK I got what you mean.

As soon as this feature would work people would probably start to IM others anyway because they know they might be on *lol*. I would prefer a better busy mode that blocks everything, regardless of my status shown The latter seems to be viewer side, while the presence indicator stuff might be server side (but I am just guessing).

Either you didn't read the previous posts where people were saying that this is not a great option for a variety of reasons or you are choosing to ignore it. I will say it again, going to an alt is not an option just for a bit of piece and quiet to do something that does not involve others. If you want the reasons, you can go read the previous posts.
These are all workarounds for a simple feature that can solve all this and give everyone what they want except... that for some reason some people have an objection to some people wanting their choice.

I think it was stated earlier that this would be an acceptable consequence. No different than not answering your phone and having the person knock on your door to see if you are really there.

Then you just tell them, face to face, so to speak, that you are really busy and want to be left alone. If they can't or won't accept that then the get dropped from the friend list, muted and/or banned from the land parcel depending on how hostile they want to get.

But, in SL, anyone that would go to that much trouble to go find you is bordering on cyber-stalking to begin with and would probably not remain on my friend list long anyway.

Some, but I think more are just to hung up on geekspeak and are overthinking the concept. And if I hear "Just get an alt" one more time.......

There are *many* like that. I know quite a few people who insist on getting mapping rights as being a sign of "true friendship" O.o

As Brenda is saying, nobody is hiding. What I outlined would be perfect for me and many others.

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EDIT: OK it now seems you are partly in agreement.
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Nothing is going to stop a person determined to get in touch at all costs, that is OK but it will raise the bar for people wanting your attention who do not know you want your privacy until they have already IM'd you. By that time you have already got the message and been distracted.

It is not even that the person wants to disturb you but today there is no way of telling unless you are right in front of someone that they are busy and/or desire privacy right now.
That needs to change and a lot of dramas would actually stop in my opinion if people could tell before IMing that you desire privacy at that time.

In more than two years, I have never met a single person that demanded that. If I ever do, they will not only NOT get the mapping ability but will get dropped from my friend list without hesitation.

I agree, I also have not been asked by anyone in the time I have been in SL to give these rights as a part of going on my FL and I concur if that had been expected then they would not be getting on the FL in the first place.

Then they would not be on my friendsl list for certain.

Well, they don't demand it (I wouldn't friend anyone who demands that), but it usually goes like this: "All of my friends let me map them, but you don't, I wonder why." *g* Must be the precious camping spots I don't wish to share -lol-

I hear you loud and clear lol