How do you manage your friends list

[Lureo]

I am just curious. How to you manage your friends list. That criteria do you use to add someone. Do you make request or are you waiting for a friend request from others? what is your ratio (% of you ask and % of you accept) 50-50 or 10 - 90 or you always ask and rarely accept ?

Personaly I ask most of the time.

How long do you keep friends. Sometimes I check my friends list and see so many people I didn't talk for so long and I was thinking why do I keep it? I should delete it after a while if it (he or she) is not online or don't let message.

How many do you have.

I am just curious to know how do you do.,

[paragonfanfare]

My own criteria is simple: "am I likely to want to talk to this person again".  If the answer is yes, then I ask (or accept).  If not, then I don't.

I think I ask more often than not.

I'm still relatively new, so my friend list isn't very large (30 or so).  I think I've removed three friends,  all due to "irreconcilable differences".  I haven't had the urge to remove anyone due to non-contact or absence - again the reason being "will I want to talk to this person again."

[Cindy Evanier]

Mine consists of business contacts and close friends.  I haven't had to cull it for a long time because I don't add casual acquaintances.  It is rare I send an invite first unless it is regarding business.  I have friends there who are long gone from SL now for various reasons but I keep them there for nostalgic reasons and they might one day have a change in circumstances and come back. Some of them I still have RL or other contact with. 

[Eva Knoller]

I prefer to have spoken to a person a few times before friending them. I have been the initiator at times, and vice versa. I don’t think I have ever removed anyone from the list, though I have been removed by some people. Mainly the people who expect me to be at their beck and call every time we happen to be logged on at the same time. Sorry, my SL doesn’t work that way, so it’s no major loss.

[Maitimo]

I rarely accept a friend request from someone I've just met. I will accept if I've got to know you well enough to know that we have something in common that's worth chatting about on a regular basis. That can happen on first meeting, but rarely. I'm not sure on the ratio of asking vs accepting, and it's probably close but slightly leaning towards accepting.

And if I have someone on my friends list that I havent seen or spoken to for so long that I've forgotten even who they are or why they're there, then I'll remove them. 

[Bitsy Buccaneer]

About as well as I manage my inventory

[Cindy Evanier]

17 minutes ago, Bitsy Buccaneer said:

About as well as I manage my inventory

Cue a question  about managing your inventory from the OP.. in 3...2...

[LittleMe Jewell]

I probably asked for about 25% of the people on my list.  I seldom do ask though, unless it is a new alt of mine (jeez, then I have to do everything). 

I accept about 10% of the requests I get - most of the accepted ones in the last year or two have been from folks that post regularly or semi-regularly here on the forums.  

I'm pretty sure I've only removed one person ever from my list - we won't discuss why.

I've been here since mid-2007 and my friends list has less than 50 people.  Seven of those are my alts and another nine are really old friends that never log in anymore - thus it doesn't really require much management.

Edited April 5, 2019 by LittleMe Jewell

[Jerilynn Lemon]

I have a friend who friended every person he had contact with from the sims he had worked. Probably talking a few hundred by now.

[Orwar]

   I don't put too much thought into my contacts, nor am I particularly bothered about people wanting to add me - I've had some people on it for years, even if we seldom communicate, others come and go about as frequently as I change socks. I occasionally purge my list, if it's got too many names in it and some of the names begin to feel too unfamiliar; but I do try to contact the people before I remove them to give them a head's up and let them know there's no hard feelings about it, as I myself don't like it when I notice my contact list has shrunk in my absence and I have to check it against my contact cards to see who went.

   It feels like some people put a whole lot of artificial convention and morality into it. A person who advertises in their profile that, 'I love to make friends, but if you want to be on my friend list you must make an effort' just comes off as elitist and needy. And the people who feel obliged to poke me every time I log in to 'keep the friendship alive', well that just feels annoying - I'm not against greeting people, but with 50-something people on the list, it'd take me half my afternoon just to be polite. I'll greet someone if I'd like to chat with them, and if someone keeps greeting me but then just going silent, their presence on my list is going to feel as more of an annoyance. Communication without content isn't the basis for friendship, in my mind.

   It doesn't have to be a big deal. There are better things to worry about. And how I manage my contacts is ultimately not all that relevant to any third party - manage it however you like, that's your business, after all.

[Ren Toxx]

99% on my initiative, 1% on the other’s, and 0% of those who ask more than once (or think it’s a way to cultivate friendship, let alone start it).

[Sorciaa]

If I have not heard from ya in 2 months.. off ya go. I try to get people the benefit of the doubt that they are really looking for a friend or if they are just looking to add another name to their list, or little black book

  One of my big pet peeves is people who are " friends " who cant, for some reason ever manage to say Hi. I do it for the 1st week or so after making a new " friend ". If they cant manage to do the same after a week or so, I simply stop.

  In all honestly, id rather have 10 people I talk to all the time then 100 I don't.

[Skell Dagger]

I don't add, and I don't ask.

My contacts list is kept solely for: my partner, my fellow Catwa CSRs, Catwa herself, plus a couple of other people whose stores I blog for, one person who organised a modelling show that I was asked to help judge a few weeks ago, a couple of old and dear friends that I've known for years, and a couple of alts (for ease of money and item transference). That's it.

However - despite my profile stating quite clearly 'Sorry, I don't accept friendship offers. No exceptions." - I still receive, on average, anything between five to ten friendship offers per week, primarily from people I've helped in the store's group, or from people who have seen me helping in the group and who want me to be available to help them any time they see me online. And that ain't happening, because the group is there for a reason, and there are boards at the store's landing point that will allow people to contact any of us CSRs instantly anyway.

In the past I was less reluctant to accept friendship offers, but after almost 12 years in SL I've experienced every kind of annoyance when it comes to contacts, from the one who sends multiple IMs the instant I log in (before the world has even rezzed around me) every single time (then logs off if I don't respond within five minutes) to the one who constantly asks me what I'm doing and then informs me that they're boooored (because they expect me to drop everything and entertain them) to the one who tries to inveigle themselves between me and my partner of ten years (that one got booted to the kerb pretty damn sharpish).

These days I value my peace and quiet. I have enough going on with support IMs and group chat for Catwa. If I chat with anyone in general IMs then it's either my partner (because I drop everything when he's online and he gets all of my attention) or my fellow CSRs.

Edited April 6, 2019 by Skell Dagger

[LittleMe Jewell]

My Friend's list is more of an "Acquaintance" list.  I don't talk to people very often and I pretty much never IM anyone just to say "Hi".  If I don't have something specific to tell someone, then I don't IM.  That follows how I behave in RL - I don't call or text people just to "chit chat" about nothing in particular. I'm also not very social in general (very much the loner type), so I will seldom IM someone to see if they want to come dance or shop or explore with me.  

I can go months or years without talking to some people on my list.  I don't have a problem if that isn't someone's style and they want to unfriend me for it.  I do have a problem with people taking me to task for it, because I do explain "my style" to everyone before I accept a friend offer or when I extend one.

[Talligurl]

Everyone  i meet is a potential  customer, and  everyone on the friends list is someone i can share things like  special  shows, new  gallery announcement  ect. ect.  I always accept   every friend  request, and send out quite a few. Those who abuse  my quick and easy friending  policy,  find out about my quick and easy unfriending  policy.

[Bitsy Buccaneer]

13 hours ago, Talligurl said:

Everyone  i meet is a potential  customer, and  everyone on the friends list is someone i can share things like  special  shows, new  gallery announcement  ect. ect.  I always accept   every friend  request, and send out quite a few. Those who abuse  my quick and easy friending  policy,  find out about my quick and easy unfriending  policy.

So you're not really interested in making friends, just in exploiting their social inclinations to get more money?

[Love Zhaoying]

On 4/5/2019 at 5:16 PM, Cindy Evanier said:

Cue a question  about managing your inventory from the OP.. in 3...2...

I imagine it will take the form of, “what is inventory?”.

[Talligurl]

9 hours ago, Bitsy Buccaneer said:

So you're not really interested in making friends, just in exploiting their social inclinations to get more money?

They are not mutually exclusive.

Some  of my best friends are people  who  I let in right away, that's a  bonus finding a good friend. Sometimes  you do not really know where a relationship s headed when you first meet, if you won't friend a person until  you are sure you are going  to click  with someone, you might never find  out.

Edited April 7, 2019 by Talligurl

[Lindal Kidd]

I try to keep my friends list below 200, because a very large friends list, like a huge inventory, can affect teleport performance and other things.

I make few friends offers, but accept almost all except "drive bys".  But I'll go through my list every few months and cull out those I haven't been in touch with for a long time.

I do keep some very old names on my list.  They've probably left SL, but seeing them there reminds me of them.

There's a feature in Firestorm that I haven't used, but that could be helpful in categorizing friends, acquaintances, and business contacts:  the Contact Sets feature.

[Bitsy Buccaneer]

5 hours ago, Talligurl said:

They are not mutually exclusive.

Some  of my best friends are people  who  I let in right away, that's a  bonus finding a good friend. Sometimes  you do not really know where a relationship s headed when you first meet, if you won't friend a person until  you are sure you are going  to click  with someone, you might never find  out.

That's very different from what you wrote above. Not mutually exclusive, but much was left out of your first post apparently.

[Talligurl]

1 hour ago, Bitsy Buccaneer said:

much was left out of your first post

Well the OP was asking about managing your friends list, which for me is driven primarily by business. But that does not mean I do not treasure true friends who I meet here.  

[Catrie]

Mine is really random. I have close friends on there, coworkers,random people I've talked to and enjoyed the conversation, visitors to the club I work at, some designers, some  fellow bloggers,etc. if I've talked to you and you send me a friend request, I will more than likely accept it. however, if you just send a random friend invite chances are I won't accept it unless I talk to you first.

[AyelaNewLife]

Mine's also a bit eclectic. I've got old friends I've not spoken to in months, people I barely know but who are there for the quarterly "hey can you sit on this pose stand for an hour?", as well as "actual friends". I'm not too picky about who I'll accept a request from, so long as we've actually talked and you're not giving off weird vibes. The only times I clean the list is to purge irritating people, or those that added me after a single conversation only for us to not talk for months. I don't really over-think it.

[Halo Minoptra]

I always refuse friend requests from people I don't know, especially people who open by sending one.

I pretty much accept any friend request if I spent a little time with a person, but on subsequent logins I tend to turn off their ability to see when I'm online. If I don't run into them again after about a month, I delete them.

I'm a pretty friendly person, but I don't like people seeing when I log in and out, and I dislike finding that someone has started a conversation with me before I've even finished logging in. 

When I actually like someone, and hope to see them again, I tell them, "I'm sorry, but I don't like the friends list -- I'd rather run into you when I'm on this sim." That's the way it works in real life -- there are people you might see at work, or at the coffee shop. In RL, people don't see your name light up on a list when you wake up in the morning.  If they did, it would be very creepy, and that's how I feel about the friends list.

 

[HeathcliffMontague]

I hardly ever think about my friends list, although I really appreciate some of the people that are there. I've never regretted accepting any friend requests, either they've just evaporated, or we've had some nice times and/or still have nice conversations. Guess I've been lucky, probably easier for guys too.

Having said that, the list of folks I count as friends is a lot longer than my friends list. I have absolutely zero interest in seeing if anyone's logged in or not until I actually meet them, or getting a pop-up when they log in.