Brain Storming - We need a better Chat Interface.

Hi.

All right pretty much like the title said. One thread has Hijacked into a discussion on Chat interfaces and I think its worthy of its own thread.

From the other Thread ..

Stuff Id like to see

The Ability to be invisible , Like in an Instant Messanger program. When Invisible you couldnt be seen on the map either.

The Abilty to Speak in one chat window and have all the rest reply that I am busy.

The Ability to Email in game and have it remain in game (like Evemail in Eve).

THe ability to form temporary Chat groups for free.

THe ability to have a different defualt window than vicinity chat when moving around.

Be *very* careful with this one, in describing what you're looking for. While I agree wholeheartedly we need this, a small corruption of this idea can turn it into a universally unacceptable one.

(This was hotly debated in Feature Suggestions a while back)

The ability to show as 'offline' from a chat perspective - and while in that mode, dissallow folks who have your calling card/friends card to 'Locate' you on the map - would be most useful.

However - the avatar still has a presence in world.

Just wanted to point this out before the pitchforks fire up

I think it would be extremely fun if facets of the chat interface were migrated to sim-managed IRC.

Because IRC has been honed for years upon years of progress, has much of this built in, and would allow some residents access to SL chat when they are at work or whatnot, it could be a major boon.

In the meantime, I guess XML-RPC bots work, but it would be really nice.

Here are a couple relevant threads to this discussion:

Configurable Chat Distance

Optional Group IMs

Invisible

Turning Group IMs On/Off

Invisible Mode

My god, Jeff..... YES!

The posibilities that could open up. Imagine, during a trivia event - I could -V the audience - letting only the Contestant & Host speak.

Providing I could block IMs (with permission) as well - it'd open up the doors for me on a bunch of events I can't do today - because its too easy to cheat.

I'm thinking more about this.... Imagine a "IRC Channel" per Parcel.

That would allow me to 'block' shouts from outside the parcel, No?

Yes I mean youd show up as "offline" and not on the map. Youd also show up as "offline" on the Find .. People.

The way it is now Its like reverse Caller ID. Not only do you freinds know whether or not your home, they know where exatcly you are.

Having to tell 10 people in an hour "leave me alone im trying to have some private time with x .." really spoils any sort of peace and quiet.

How can you prevent cheating by messaging between users when cheaters can use AOL IM, IRC, ICQ, etc. ?

prevent cheating?

what does that have to do with the chat interface?

Yes, but at the same time you dont want 10 people standing in the same room with you when you are having your private chat that are otherwise invisible, right?

I think this is just a wording thing, but you are not suggesting that it would be okay to be on the grid and yet undetectable are you?
I would have problems with that.

I would be in favour of being able to find anyone at any time, it has it's drawbacks as you noted, but if those drawbacks apply to friends, I dont see why they should not also apply to others.

.

well you would be visible to other avatars in a physical sense. I mean invisible in ICQ/YIM etc sense.

yes youd be undetectable on the gird , the same way many choose to have an unlisted phone number.

In real life my firends dont have GPS tracking on me and know where I am at any particular instant. And no one can force me to asnwer my cell phone. For all they know im sleeping ( "offline"

Why does Second Life have to be any different?

You would of course be visible always to the Lindens in case of AR.

By 'Cheating' - I meant Cheating at a trivia game.

For example - I wanted to put together a $25,000 Pyramid game. Player X gets a phrase "Things that taste like chicken" - and has to get player Y to guess the phrase.

Problem is, anyone in the audience (or player X) could IM player Y, and give them the answer. It'd be too easy for players to collude to attempt to win the contest.

Chuck - You're absolutely right - I didn't think about external communication methods, or the telephone for that matter. So much for that idea.

I still *love* the idea of having IRC-like tools for chat, however

Yes - exactly my concern over the wording. Folks like Dianne <rightfully> are concerned about stealth avatars in-world that we can't see, spying and griefing undetected. This is what would be unacceptable.

Chat invisiblity, and the ability to temporarily block locating an AV on the map with a calling card - is benign IMHO - and would only serve to allow us all greater privacy when we desire it.

Thank you for refreshing my memory about Anarchy. When someone in the other thread mentioned their opinion that Anarchy Online had a pretty sophisticated chat system, all I remembered was having to log into channels every time I entered the game (using macros it was only an annoyance). But this is exactly what AO does -- their chat system uses some kind of IRC server. I remember chatting with guild members while I was in-game and they were at work but logged into IRC. It broke down the barrier between in-game chat and the rest of the world.

Not sure what that implies for Second Life, but when I see a friend listed on the SL front page who is in-world right now and I'm not, I'd love to be able to tell them something through Yahoo! or IRC or Instant Messenger without having to be logged into SL.

Also: Someone else noted that you can set yourself as "BUSY" and filter out chat when you want some quiet time. The problem isn't that we don't have a tool like that. The problem is that it is all-or-nothing. It would be wonderful to be able to set a default option on each group channel so we can choose whether to appear on their chat list and receive their spam or not. More versatility is a plus.

I'm not in favor of stealth avs, but I am in favor of some way to show as "away" or "busy" or even not logged on (other games call it "anonymous" for those cases where we may not want to deal with a friend's issues at a time when we have our hands full with our own. I wouldn't be invisible in the world, just unavailable in chat.

Yeah, right on the (dog) nose.
That's what I meant to say.

Colette: I totally agree that it would be nice to not always have all my friends to be aware of where I am when I am online. I find I usually have about fourty or so friends at any one time, even after deleting the older ones regularly. That's a *lot* of people that know where you are all of a sudden. I find myself sometimes being fearful of the login, cause the minute you show up every friend in SL knows where to find you!

- Option Time Stamps

- Clickable URLs in Chat History

- Chat Logging built in, auto-save option on log out

- Optional name Highlighty user specified

Anything else IRC supports.

C'mon, this is standard stuff I've been asking for since I got here really, and I'm sick of asking for it.

We still have the same chat system we had when this was posted, don't we?