Voice awareness for non-voice users

Hmm. I am very much disturbed by people spamming with gestures, howling etc. Where does that sit in all this?

It does indeed. We're adaptable, us human beings, we cope

I'm a pretty good follower of chat, even at busy music venues with lots of different conversations going on, but those 12-line gestures drive me nuts. Especially if they're totally unrelated to anything in the conversation and repeated 15 times over.

(that was my not so friendly moment for the day, won't happen again! )

Just pointing out that here are some people who have more than technical difficulties. I don't know the demographics but it is probable that the percentage of deaf and hearing impaired people may be greater than the overall percentage of deaf and hearing impaired people in the world as a virtual world with text communication may offer an extra appeal to such people. That aside I think it's a given that there is no harm in enabling voice if someone asks me to so they can participate in a conversation via mic so I don't understand why someone would not extend this courtesy unless they really just didn't want to communicate with the person. Of course if I flick it on and hear loud music and a television in the background it is going right off again.

If that was unfriendly I couldn't see it!

I have massive rants I could do on this subject but I won't LOL. I tend to read everything, and speed read at that, so I read the whole lot and still miss something.

They are a griefer tool too, and have been used that way. Choice is to ignore someone who might have something useful to say and I leave actual mute as a last option (usually I just IGNORE rather than mute people).

Well you can always mute them. I do it on occasions, especially at clubs. It's more the sound that is annoying than the text for me. I have chat bubbles enabled so it minimizes the problem of spam pushing text chat out of my view when I also check of show muted text in case I still want to see what they are saying other than the gesture spamming. It's nothing personal against the people doing it. People sometimes get silly with gestures. I usually unmute them before I logoff too.

Ya know, I had totally forgotten about the noise that comes with them!!!! I usually have all sounds turned down except music, unless I'm exploring.

Cherry, I am one of those read-all persons myself and yes I just ignore it too. Not muted a single person yet.

People who don't want to use voice for technical reasons just can't use voice, so it isn't an option for them. Those who don't want to use voice because it would reveal RL personal information they don't want to reveal, can't ever use it because once the Pandora's Box is open, it can't be closed again.

I sometimes do. If it becomes clear to me that even if they were not spamming we might well not have anything to talk about then I stop caring that I might miss something potentially interesting and put myself out of my misery

My point was more than they are a text AND noise thing, so people who don't like hearing disembodied voices - do gestures bother you?

Yes. Immensely. All the standard gestures have been deleted from my inventory.

I don't like voice, don't like WL "get off my lawn!"
... no seriously, most of my friends don't use it, just a few or I talk to them on the phn
and when I over listen to general voice, it's boring?
Ppls reading what is being typed out loud or rude to ea other ALOT or spamming their crap muzak or repeating themselves and I think, ida wanta talk to these ppls,
I'm like a deer caught in the headlights on voice anyways, too quiet, but boisterous on the phn go figure.

I don't think the assumption of this thread was voice users should accommodate non-voicers.

The hope of the OP was they could just tell who was voicing without enabling voice themselves.

There is no reason a voicer should accommodate a non-voicer ; they can just walk the other way without communicating.

However, consideration is something everyone should try to practice. So both should be considerate when they choose not to communicate, if neither wishes to use the other medium.

General voice chat is the pits, in a lot of places. About the only public places I use it are at B&D if I am bored enough to go there, and at my beach. Even then it ends up in IM quite often.

With friends who I talk to regularly on voice at B&D I might use it elsewhere equally nefarious but other than an event (say like Marin's performance mentioned earlier in the thread) or something like that, I never really use it.

Not even at the Welcome Area or Help Island tbh (and if you want to hear nonsense on voice that's a good place to hear it ... headphones are off and so is voice these days!).

I don't like gestures that spam either text or sound bits.

I really hate the ROFL pig laugh one

and the Hoooowwwlzz one.

Since those two have been around as long as I have.

Yuck.

I wonder what percentage of the general population uses Voice on an active basis? I'm not including us here in the Forums, cause we are a minority, to be sure. Say there are 60,000 avatars online, 20% of those are "Real People" i.e. not landbots/trafficbots/searchbots/etc. What percentage of that 12,000 people is actually using Voice?

As low as that?

I have used voice a couple of times with my close friends, but other than that I never even see mention of it in world. I dont know if people around me are using voice though (when shopping, exploring n stuff) so it would be interesting to know how many are using it. LL needs to add that to their stats

LOL I have no idea, I just picked a number that I could divide into 60,000 evenly, hehe.

Yes, it's me...Voice Man!

Ok, so...I always love to throw in my two Lindens on this subject in particular...

Voice (VoIP) is a technology many gamers, techies, and geeks have been waiting for for a very long time. Typing is so cumbersome--hence the uber popularity of Team Speak and Ventrilo.

When speaking with friends, clients, customers, and colleagues, voice is invaluable. It saves massive amounts of time (and sometimes money), as well as much more clearly refines the wants and needs of the other participant. Now...telling me that certain aspects of a conversation needs to be documented, and using an IM text session is the only way, isn't true at all. In business, we all learn to take 'minutes' (or notes)...and when you're speaking with someone via VoIP, you simply have a notecard open, jotting down important bits of information--this is actually a far more efficient and fine-tuned method of capturing key elements of a meeting, because you yourself are editing and bulleting, keep only the important needed information.

Next...

Getting personal...OK, so some of you don't like to talk, because it gives away who (or what) you are. That's fine. But on my end, I see voice as a wonderful opportunity to truly get to know 'somebody'...instead of befriending a digital avatar. Not to mention, the way someone talk, their wording and sentence structure, their inflections, and all that other subtle information is all captured in voice. Whether I'm interested in getting to know you, or work with you...I prefer to know the 'real you.' But hey...this is all just my preference.

In gaming (especially FPS games) VoIP has been an overwhelmingly auspicious augmentation (that's a mouthful). Who wants to type, "The bomb is at B!" When they can just say it...a few seconds are crucial to survival. But I understand that SL isn't one of those games...however, in terms of speed...much much more can be covered, mulled over, dialoged, and shared as opposed to text.

All the other reasons why texters want to remain in a alphanumeric world...that's another story. I'm just stating my own personal love for the tech.

Argh don't call it VoIP. I'm not at work!!!!!!!!!!

If someone is in voice IM they won't have the dot over their head as they are not available for spacial chat. This gives a false illusion that there are less voicers than there actually are.

Repeated, nay spammed, cos this is a long thread.

Id have to agree there are a lot more voicers out there than people on the forums seem to think.

(ohh lol newsflash! Mike likes Voice!)


I think it IS the fact there are more than people think that led to the OP's question/idea.

It's not Voice Over Internet Protocol (VoIP)? I know that certain companies (Vetnrilo and Teamspeak, Battlefield) use VoiP...doesn't SL use similar technology?

Not sure what you're saying actually.

Please don't capitalize words that shouldn't be...you might confuse the spectators.

I'm saying that all our phone traffic at work is carried via VoIP.

I just got home from work after a looooooooong long day. Don't want to think about the place

there all fixed-

can I have a gold star now?