Privacy Update? Please?

No, I expect that when you set yourself "offline" you no longer show up to anyone through the instant message interface or any other "telephone", "email", or "directory" style interface provided by Linden Labs unless you choose to place a call or take other action that indicates you're available to specific people. Only the people who are physically in your presence will be able to see you or initiate contact with you.

Just like in real life.

Indeed. But that means they can be potentially interrupted by at most 40 people, not more than 4000 on a busy day.

There's a red dot on your forehead. DUCK!

God damn, I was wondering if I was the only one. Thank you for saying this, because when I ask things like "what are you people doing that you get pushed all the time?" people respond as if I'm mad, and say things like "you must not hang out at XXX". Usually naming some place like the Lusk platform where I often hang out. I was wondering if I had some kind of magic halo of grief prevention...

Yes, and that is the problem. Because SL isn't a chat system, it's also a place... in fact it's many places. And you can be in a place... a city, a neighborhood, a mall, a virtual world... even in a place with a communication device, without everyone in that place knowing that you're there. The ones in your immediate vicinity do, but that's all.

You can even use a communications device without alerting everyone in the "place" who happens to be interested enough that you're there.
That's why treating "online" as meaning "this person is in Second Life" is a problem.

I don't think that it's even a good idea to be able to tell whether a person is in SL. Knowing that they have been in SL recently, sure, but there's no reason that needs to be more precise than "they've been here in the past 24 hours".

I'm in total agreement aside from the fact that I still prefer a separation between being "Unavailable" and being truely "Offline".

Something to consider:

If instead of being able to set yourself "Offline", if you could instead set yourself to be "Unavailable", that state could persist when you log out and back in. That also means the the "Argent Stonecutter is Online" message your friends get could be suppressed until you set yourself as "Available".

On the other hand, it wouldn't be very logical to set set yourself "Offline"... then logout... then log back in and have your "Offline" status persist, would it? That'd be very confusing.


Exactly. We're on the same wavelength.

I'll have to consider that a little more. You make a very good case for abandoning the idea of "Online/Offline" in SL but I have a sneaking suspicion that there's something very fundimental about it that needs addressing.

I do this..haha. All I really need is to just be able to log in initially as invisible, have the time I need to respond to the offline IMs I've recieved, take care of a little business, and then be able to set myself as visible again and let people actually see me and find me in a calmer more conversationally available state.

As far as an "unavailable" setting, this seems to me it would be just like setting yourself as busy, it still makes it clear enough to people that you are there and they will attempt to contact you. I have lots of people who contact me and aren't on my friends list seeing me log in and out, they just look at my profile to know whether I'm online or not. I like the idea of being able to log in at home and not have anyone know I'm around at all until I'm ready to be seen.

Let's pretend for a moment that we completly remove the "Online/Offline" status indicator.

So, I'm out walking around Ahern and I wonder to myself, "Hmm... is Shady around? I'd like to show her this cool gizmo I found." Now, Shady is on my friend's list but since there there is no indicator to tell me if she's online or not at best all I can do is: check her home land (if she has any) to see if she's there, check her favorite hangout spots, or I can try sending her an instant message.

Let's assume that Shady is not currently in-world. I teleport to her land and don't see her around. I check a few places she can sometimes to be found. Nope. Then I send her an IM message saying "Hey.. you around? If so, write back. I found a fun gizmo."

Then I wait. Maybe I wait for five minutes.. maybe ten. I don't hear back. In all, I probably just spent 15-20 minutes of my time just trying to figure out if someone was even reachable in the world of Second Life and guess what... they weren't. What's more, Shady will get a little email in her inbox (maybe more if I was impatient) from me that simply says "Hey... you around? If so, write back." for no reason other than I could not find her.

Was Shady's privacy preserved? Most certainly. Is this consistent with real life? You bet. I simply could not reach her. I don't know if she was in world and ignoring me or simply not logged in at all.

So the real question here is: Does the inconvienance of not having an "Online/Offline" status indicator more or less important to people than having total and complete privacy?

I REALLY didn't want to contribute to this and spoke to Flipper privately, since he's a pal -- BUT, I think this is probably the core of the issue and not so much needing to appear 'offline'. If a far more comprehensive for allowing, denying and rerouting IMs (to email, a 'missed messages' window, etc) along with other ways of actually organizing this traffic, I think this would work better.

Lord knows I've had people drop me 'offline' messages on SL, have had people IM me on AIM in the past while invisible or set away or otherwise not there with 'Are you there?', etc. Lord knows I've used Find to check how I'm going to write an IM to someone when I need to drop them a note, as most people probably phrase themselves differently when they think someone isn't around. It's also been a handy drama avoidance tool -- which I'd really miss if it went away. The problem isn't going to go away by marking yourself 'offline', the problem is that the IM interface and organization just plain sucks and it needs to be fixed. Especially message persistence -- losing stuff before I close it or really see it blows.

I'd also blame 90% of the issue more on the 'So and so has signed on' messages people I'm friends with get before I've even finished signing on. If there was a five or ten minute grace period from those messages appearing, that'd cut out a good deal, even if you could still find me via Find. That'd fall into range of 'coinicdence'. Then there's no harm hopping on for five minutes, doing something quick and popping off.

Really, we need a better IM interface, better controls over what messages get through and where all of them go -- Being able to have multiple windows to lump IMs into from various folks, groups, etc. .. like say a 'Non-friends' IM window, all at your optional use. Modern messenging clients out there can do this. An outright 'global deny' and whitelistist control over who can identify your green dot and warp to it is also key. The invisible dot thing is a bit trickier, I certainly think it should never vanish from the mini-map -- the group/owned hide mode is interesting and worth thinking about.

I loved the 'Looking for company!' idea someone had. That was so cool it gets its own line here.

I think really what it boils down to is that quick fixes need to be avoided. A more flexible set of controls on how to manage IMs could totally mitigate the whole need to not appear online at all. Harris was half-right about 'offline' not being a magic bullet (and may have adverse effects to folks) -- but the fixation on RL from others, and Harris' own 'all or nothing' shotgun approach aren't really the only ways of looking at it.

Really, don't we all just want better management of IMs in general and the ability to say 'Hay. maybe people with my card shouldn't know which dot is mine' at its core?

Does kind of raise the messy issue of seperating local-private IM's apart from long distance private IM's.

Various stream of consciousness rambling:

As I see it at the moment there are a few major reasons for privacy controls:
1) solitary isolation: for uninterrupted building/scripting
2) local focus: to reduce 'outside' distractions in favor of interacting with people present
3) exclusivity: to restrict who can just 'show up'.
4) discretion: the ability to login/logoff without all friends being notified each time.

On my previous message, I forgot to mention the friends list.. which should also have some icon indicating Friendly/DND mode as well, which would be a great way for people to figure out who to visit or announce that they're feeling social and welcome visitors. (or not).


--
Wish I could make it to the round table. :-/

Belaya- I agree with much of what you said.

I get a lot of "Hi How are you, what's new??!" messages every time I log in.. it's nice, but I've hurt feelings by not answering, or being terse. I'd rather the announcement of me coming on line wasn't "heralded throughout the realm." It's my own fault for accepting so many cards sure, but I'd be in the same predicament with cancelling them.

If you have an IM window open with someone and they go offline... you SHOULD get a disconnect message. And, probably if they re-connect within 2-3 minutes and you still have the window open, probably a re-connect message too.

Harris/Argent- I think the online/offline indicator IS necessary... otherwise it'll be a pile of "are you there?" messages, which when responded to will probably be to someone who isn't online. The indicator should be honest. If you can IM someone that's in world but labelled 'offline' it'll just encourage people to ignore the offline flag and IM anyway.

There SHOULD be a non "Instant" type of Messaging between players. Whether that's email or like-email, there should be something that fills this niche. Notecards just don't cut it though. (and for that matter, can we please get an INBOX folder rather than having things vanishing into our various other folders automatically? God I hate that).

I'm still rather wildly in favor of the Do Not Disturb and Friendly modes. They clearly state intent without any hide'n'seek games. If you want to be chatty, find other folks in 'Friendly' mode. If you absolutely must contact someone in DND mode, you ask very nicely if that person could contact you when they they can.

I went to the "dissusion" tonight at the pooley stage and did not even get the chance to speak. So much for such things! I admit to being late but there was a staff meeting at my rl job and the boss likes to speak. I signed in with the soap box.........

Suppose I am going to lose again on this issue. I am always losing in SL, sigh..........

as my father always said "screw it!"

Ya think you might belong to a few too many groups, Flipper? I had group tags for only 3 nightclubs, and the unending IMs were driving me to distraction, dinging at me every 10 secs. So I resigned from the nightclub VIP groups. If you join every group in SL even vaguely related to whatever it is you do, of course you're going to be swanped. It's like telemarketers... you unlist your phone number.

Then, there's BUSY mode... not the same thing as AWAY: you do what you want to do, and everyone else WAITS until you decide you're NOT BUSY anymore. No IMs -- if you're standing around in public, rather than in your own private workspace, people who know you might come looking for you instead of IM-ing you. So you go in your house/workshop, lock the door, and put out a big 1-prim sign that says DO NOT DISTURB: WORKING. Don't laugh. Try it.

Don't know why you're talking about notecards, though -- I've only gotten one spam notecard in SL, and that was about 30 mins after I bought my First Land (some furniture designer, whose notecard I saved JUST so that I will remember NEVER to buy anything from him EVER -- scanning the Linden's FIRST LAND purchase lists and then spamming the list is just trashy). I"ve gone thru my notecards and cleaned them out 3 times already, and will probably end up doing it again in about another month. Everywhere you go, the minute you walk in the door of a store, they drop a notecard on you from some "shop assistant" script -- I call it spam. I promise I will never do it at my shop; I might get some kind of gadget that gives a notecard when someone ASKS for one (or a catalog), but I'm not sure about that yet. Where are you getting all these notecards?

I would love to see an INBOX type folder! instead of searching through half the inventory to find whatever was dropped onto it. As for the email-like messaging, I simply got a gmail address for this AV - it breaks immersion, but at least it works consistently



Yes please!!! There's a lot of folks on my friends list I almost never IM because I know they are often busy and I'd rather not disturb them for idle chat - even though I truly enjoy conversation with them. Knowing that they are in fact feeling social and not busy working would be excellent.

I'm not a member of any groups that spam. Those are just regular, everyday IMs that I get. I'm not a member of a single nightclub group or mall group. The closest thing to a spam group I'm in is "Live Help" (which you can see above) which lights up a few times a day but can easily be closed once it start. Check my groups in my profile - you'll notice most are land holding groups, projects or businesses; not social groups.


The 1-prim sign is good for local traffic, however, doesn't work for IMs. Busy mode is completely useless:
(1) It suppresses local chat
(2) If you have a single IM open already, IMs still come through anyway
(3) It declines inventory passed
(4) People know its borked in this way so they ignore busy mode.

That being said...

THANK YOU LINDEN LAB FOR ADDRESSING THIS PROBLEM, AND THANKS TO EVERYONE WHO SHOWED UP LAST NIGHT!

A lot of good discussion has come out of this (I've changed my view on the dot on the minimap, for one - call me a flip-flopper!), and some semantic changes could be useful (for both SL and IM clients). I'd also like to thank Ranma's griefers for not following her to the meeting last night. Ranma, the community roundtable meetings follow a schedule, so the soapbox is first come, first serve. I didn't sign up for a soapbox session since my views on the issue are pretty clear; I wanted to hear what others had to say. Sorry you didn't get there in time.

I'm glad to hear we'll be seeing the first few privacy developments sooner rather than later. I'm really looking forward to being able to occasionally build and script uninterrupted again! Thanks again LL, and everyone involved in the discussion.

Regards,

-Flip

I think having an Inventory Inbox folder would rock. I bet about half of the failed inventory transfers are due to people not being able to find where a purchased item lands in their inventory. My messages often get capped, so I don't know who passed me what and then a month later I find all of the event invites that I never knew about. This is also why you see alot of designers labelling their products like *My Dress* Black & White so that it automatically goes to the top of your inventory.

Now that would be cool. I hate seeing an email, so-and-so has offered you inventory, and then logging on and having to figure out what and where.

Flipper, would you mind recapping what those first few privacy developments will be? Unfortuantely I was unable to attend last night and I have not found a transcript of the meeting. Thank you!

Good thing you got some meaning out of that meeting! I find the meetings in Second Life even more useless that the staff calls at my firm! Did you get a "transcript" of that meeting? I was being distracted by my family throughout the entire thing. I forgot to copy it to a notecard



About Griefers and me, I usually do not have a problem with them. The ones that hit me come quickly and when I am unprepared. They also usually don’t go to Linden meetings, at least not twice!



Oh, I signed up with the "soapbox" but was never called. It said I was third but more people spoke than that. I quess the Lindens didn’t want to hear from me as well, sigh................



Oh, I can not read your screen very well and magnifying it only makes it worse. I can read a few words here and there. Why you are trying to surrender to them is an unknown :

Guess this is another battle lost! If I saw it corectly someone wants to remove all forms of ID for an avatar and it seemed to have group approval. Dont think that the Lindens will go that far but think that the green dot on the map is history. Wonder when they will remove it?

Yes, and if items purchased or given to me via script would also go into a special folder shopping would be a lot more fun

They're going to be taking baby steps. The first step is going to be the ability to Map people; that's going to be removed or made an option (that wasn't made abundantly clear). The second step will be a better ability to "appear online but not accepting IMs" - more detail on this will be found in the community roundtable transcript. The overall sound of it was that they'll do things that are easy fairly soon, with a more robust solution later. The idea of an "inbox" for inventory passes and instant messages that persist between sessions, until you delete / move / close them, is most appealing; even if you'd have to put a time limit cap on it (IE, if you don't address the IM / inventory item / etc within 30 days, it gets deleted). If this were to be, I'd like to ability to block people on a per-avatar basis from dropping IMs / inventory (spammers!)... and strict rules on spamming using the Inbox.


As I explained, there's a certain allotment of time given for each topic, or the meeting would go on forever. You were third in line when the time expired for the topic; had you been there earlier and gotten in line to speak, you would have been called.


I crunched the screenshot down as my resolution is 1680x1050 and most people have smaller resolutions. Plus, I didn't want to "ultra stretch" the forum page, and wanted to compress the screenshot so it downloaded quickly for people. Its just common courtesy. Also, no one is talking about removing the green dot on the minimap anymore, what was discussed is how useless the green dots on the main map are becoming. A suggestion I made was to put a small circle in the center of each sim on the main map with the number of avatars in the sim, rather than green dots. Then green dots on the main map clutter the overall map when you zoom out to see the world. With so many in world at any given time now, its becoming less and less useful.

Regards,

-Flip

Excellent. I do hope they make it optional, and a setting that can be adjusted on a friend-by-friend basis. There are people I would like to be able to map me. Yes, I would love this feature. Just last night I got an email about somebody giving me inventory. When I found the item, I discovered two more that I had missed (both invitations to events I should not have missed). I love the idea of an Inbox.

Thank you for the information Flipper!

I wonder what the Lindens solution is going to be? Will they take one of the suggestions or come up with their own completly different "solution"? We are going to have to wait...............

It seem you missed a lot, even though you were at the meeting last night. They said what they were going to do in the short, medium and long term. Re-read the transcript (when its posted) and you'll see.

Regards,

-Flip

I lost the transcript! Remember?

Forgot to save it and remember who was also late for the meeting?? Do you have a copy for me??