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[Scylla Rhiadra]

Just now, Mollymews said:

Scylla asked if there was a legitimate for not turning it off.

Sorry Molly, this is not actually what I asked.

What I asked was whether there were legitimate reasons for wanting to know if someone was "hiding" from you.

[Annie Nova]

21 hours ago, Kellina Wandsworth said:

I know how to hid from people what Im trying to figure out is if there is a way to no if someone is hiding from you.

If you are in the same group as the person you are looking at, you can check the group members list and see if they are online or not

[Mollymews]

4 minutes ago, Scylla Rhiadra said:

Sorry Molly, this is not actually what I asked.

What I asked was whether there were legitimate reasons for wanting to know if someone was "hiding" from you.

friendship is not this simple.  Is pretty normal to wonder about the level of a friendship when a person chooses to "hide" their presence from us

i get that we may do this with contacts, but if we treat our friends like this then best for us to re-evaluate the status of the relationship

 

ps. I just add that I have exactly 1 friend on my Contacts list.  And 54  Calling cards

[Alwin Alcott]

4 hours ago, Mollymews said:

 However, when we find that we are often not there for another person, then best to remove ourselves from the list of people who are there for them 

sorry but i'm not here for another person , for me it goes way too far to say you shouldn't be on that list when you'r not available for them... my friends don't háve to be on that list, i know who they are without seeing a name, for me it's only about "contacts" , for me friends are the people you séé on regular base, not just pop up a name when you log on. A lot more as in RLL friends you see and meet , not call them ten times a day where they are and to get a message.

[kiramanell]

5 hours ago, Mollymews said:

a legitimate reason is that there is some comfort in being able to look at our friends list and know that the person in bold is there for us

sure we do need/want alone time sometimes. However, when we find that we are often not there for another person, then best to remove ourselves from the list of people who are there for them 

 

I think we should be careful not to confuse 'online' with 'available.' If you think about it, online just denotes a technical status, really. Like ppl realizing I returned from vacation, and am back in the country again. Nothing more. Not sure exactly when -- although I suspect social media had a lot to do with it -- but, at some point, ppl began to equate 'being online' with 'being available' (for them). Were this the case in real life, where ppl would even know, all the time, when I'm home or not, that would already more than creep me out too. And yet I'm plenty available for my friends. But, to protract the analogy, not always at their back-and-call, merely for them knowing I'm in the country again.

Furthermore, I defer to everything Scylla said.  She said it way better than I ever could; and, more important, is right about what she said to boot.

Edited August 13, 2019 by kiramanell

[kiramanell]

1 hour ago, Mollymews said:

friendship is not this simple.  Is pretty normal to wonder about the level of a friendship when a person chooses to "hide" their presence from us

 

Ah, but there's the rub!  You're already reasoning from the position where you found out they're 'hiding' from you. But that circles us right back to Scylla's most poignant question, "whether there were legitimate reasons for wanting to know if someone was 'hiding' from you" in the first place? I can't answer that for you, of course, but, speaking strictly for myself, I even find the whole notion of calling it 'hiding' questionable, as doing so seems predicated on the rather self-entitled premise that not being available for ppl whenever they want, is doing something wrong. Not saying that's you doing that, of course; but just that, in my view, ppl aren't 'hiding' from me, they're simply not available. 

[Mollymews]

10 minutes ago, kiramanell said:

 

 "whether there were legitimate reasons for wanting to know if someone was 'hiding' from you"

from a friendship pov

when a person is my actual friend, then I tell my friend that I am going to "hide" myself from them before I do it. I tell them this because they are my friend. I don't put my friend into a position where they have to guess why i have done this to them

we could say that if they are truly our friend then they would understand that we chose to "hide" ourselves from them without us having to give them an explanation when we do this.  The thing with this is tho that our friend never did anything to us, we did it to them. And it is a small jump from here to diverting away from our own behaviour, to making it about our friend's reaction

 

from a SL pov.  I view my list as a friends list.  Is why I only have 1 friend. For everyone else then they are a entry in my calling cards folder.  Why I view it like this is probably because old school V1 days.  Used to be able to Add Friend or Offer Calling Card from the right click menu. Offer Calling Card was done a lot back in those days, at least among the more experienced users.  Add Friend option was mostly done by new people back then

[Gabriele Graves]

Why should there be an expectation that because a person has added someone to their friend list that it entitles them to be notified every time they login and logout?
Being online does not imply being available.
 

[Eva Knoller]

This is an interesting discussion. I personally find nothing wrong or offensive about folks on my friend list choosing to hide their status. I take status at face value and have no desire to investigate further. I have hidden my status in the past, mostly from very needy friends. That may sound harsh, but I log in to SL for my own entertainment. I did once run into a person that I had hidden, and that was awkward! The bottom line for me is that not everyone logged into SL is there to socialize 100% of the time. Sometimes I log in to get away from people.

[Alyona Su]

9 hours ago, Alwin Alcott said:

it goes way too far to say you shouldn't be on that list when you'r not available for them

Availability has nothing to do with it. Though if you both go for weeks without so much as a "Hi, watcha doin'" then why are you even bothering?

[Sylvia Tamalyn]

8 hours ago, Mollymews said:

we could say that if they are truly our friend then they would understand that we chose to "hide" ourselves from them without us having to give them an explanation when we do this.  The thing with this is tho that our friend never did anything to us, we did it to them. And it is a small jump from here to diverting away from our own behaviour, to making it about our friend's reaction

You refer to the unchecking of the box as something one "does" to their friend, like it's an attack and something they should take personally.

I'd like to think that most people are more practical about it and don't see it as a personal affront when a friend wants to be undisturbed for any reason or no reason at all. It's just a check mark in a box, not a grade given to the friendship itself.

[Alyona Su]

3 hours ago, Sylvia Tamalyn said:

You refer to the unchecking of the box as something one "does" to their friend, like it's an attack and something they should take personally.

I'd like to think that most people are more practical about it and don't see it as a personal affront when a friend wants to be undisturbed for any reason or no reason at all. It's just a check mark in a box, not a grade given to the friendship itself.

Butttt... *remove* them from your list and see what happens. Even if there have been zero contact for a month or two. LOL

[Mahala Roviana]

I've "hidden" from my friend's list recently. I was trying to learn something new and wanted to concentrate. I also have social anxiety and sometimes I have a hard time talking to people, especially when they start to get too close, or I feel like I've revealed too much RL information. 

But, it didn't occur to me people may be offended. 

*shrugs*

There's nothing I can do about that. I think some people go around looking for a reason to be offended and they usually find it.

[Gabriele Graves]

What is a friendship?  It is a relationship between two or more people and with all relationships it can often mean different things to each person.  Everyone has different expectations of a friendship but seldom do those get communicated directly, they are implied and discovered along the way which is often why expectations are badly matched and friends can fall out.

I struggle with the viewpoint that because LL decided to call it the "Friends" list, that it must literally be a list of friends or that if you get added it must literally mean that you are now a friend.  It seems ridiculous to me.  I cannot help but feel that LL called it "Friends List" to be warm, fuzzy and friendly, giving SL an approachable vibe but not necessarily to be taken so literally.  Maybe the drama would be less, the list more modern and relevant if it was renamed to "Contact List" just like with phones.  It might help break this implicit expectation which seems to be so prevalent and troublesome.

[Anna Nova]

I don't use the 'friends list', except for my partner.  Reason: Log-in, chorus of 'Hi, How are you?' messages, usually before your butt has rezzed.

The one remark in RP that will get you an instant block/de-rezz is 'add me!'.  Most don't even say 'please'!

[Amanda Crisp]

Unfortunately, its very easy to see who’s on and who’s not. The SL marketplace sells any number of Avatar Scanners that can deny privacy to anyone whose avatar system name you add to its list. 

[Gabriele Graves]

1 minute ago, AmandaKeen said:

Unfortunately, its very easy to see who’s on and who’s not. The SL marketplace sells any number of Avatar Scanners that can deny privacy to anyone whose avatar system name you add to its list. 

Yes though if a person does this, they probably are not going to stop at knowing you are online, they are likely going to bother you when you don't want to be bothered.  I don't know about you but if it became obvious (and it is) they were doing this on an ongoing basis then I would class it as a type of harassment (what friend does that?).  I would then be blocking them and hope they move on to fresh grounds because it is clear they don't really want to be friends after all.  Hopefully more reasonable people will just accept your preferences at that time and if they cannot, they can "defriend" and move on.

[Bitsy Buccaneer]

On 8/13/2019 at 1:25 AM, Scylla Rhiadra said:

It's maybe a little odd that no one is asking the obvious question.

What legitimate reason could you possibly have to need to know when someone who has chosen not to be visible to you is online?

Other than stalking them of course.

I have a wee story on this from probably 8 or so years ago, back when I was trying to do the SL dating thing. Sometimes when this guy I was seeing would say he was logging off there would be the normal delay, but it started becoming immediate. That seemed odd. Some how I had a free online checker, a gift or maybe in an MM board or something. Anyway, I used it to see if he was still online when he said he was logging out and the notice arrived immediately. Turns out he was.

It wasn't a big deal. His behaviour was becoming increasingly erratic and the initial friendship was waning so I was content enough to let it go. I just wanted to know - with a minimum of fuss and bother - if he was indeed lying to me before I decided.

If I'd wanted to keep dating him or try to develop it into a relationship, I would have asked and talked it through with him.

As an end note, we stayed as friends for a while but his mental state deteriorated more and more. I thought mental illness, a friend who knows more said it sounded like cocaine. Either way, he was in a bad way and it wasn't something I could even begin to help a stranger with over the internet. I don't know what would have happened if I'd tried to talk about the logging out thing with him. Paranoia became part of his mental make-up and there may have been signs of it earlier. It was never directed towards me, but if I had questioned him or pulled on the thread...? I think my instinct was sound to take the less risky route, though that depended on me accepting the information rather than using it as a weapon.

I've also used groups to see if friends in other time zones were still logging in. Both have serious health problems. One had a dodgy internet connection so that was probably why she disappeared. But the last I heard from the other she was going into hospital for a major operation. She unticked and reticked people as her energy levels fluctuated, so that by itself wasn't worrying. She never reticked me after the operation though and when I worried about her, just wanting to know if she'd made it through or if the world had lost her, all I could do was send an IM to a presumably capped account and check a group we were both in.

So that's two, or perhaps three. To avoid drama or misunderstanding by using a means other than asking to confirm or contradict a suspicion. To see if someone's stopped logging in (on that account of course). And as a probably pointless thing to do when there's very real reason to be worried about someone and it's all you can do.

[Amanda Crisp]

2 hours ago, Gabriele Graves said:

Yes though if a person does this, they probably are not going to stop at knowing you are online, they are likely going to bother you when you don't want to be bothered.  I don't know about you but if it became obvious (and it is) they were doing this on an ongoing basis then I would class it as a type of harassment (what friend does that?).  I would then be blocking them and hope they move on to fresh grounds because it is clear they don't really want to be friends after all.  Hopefully more reasonable people will just accept your preferences at that time and if they cannot, they can "defriend" and move on.

Personally, I have wondered why LL sanctions scanners in its official marketplace.

[Gabriele Graves]

11 minutes ago, AmandaKeen said:

Personally, I have wondered why LL sanctions scanners in its official marketplace.

I think it is probably a case of policing it would be very time intensive and futile.  It is trivial to script and really it is what you do with the information that is more the problem not so much that you know at all.

[Scylla Rhiadra]

5 hours ago, Bitsy Buccaneer said:

It wasn't a big deal. His behaviour was becoming increasingly erratic and the initial friendship was waning so I was content enough to let it go. I just wanted to know - with a minimum of fuss and bother - if he was indeed lying to me before I decided.

When I wrote this post, I'll admit that the only real reason I could think of for wanting to know if someone was "hiding" from you was "drama" -- and, of course, specifically the "Is-My-Man-Cheating-on-Me" sort of thing that we've all run across before.

This particular story is, i suppose, a rather more legitimate variant on that. I suspect, to be honest, that the drama-inducing versions are a lot more common than your case, but I will agree that yours does indeed represent a legitimate instance -- largely, though, because of how you used the information you gleaned. I think that if everyone could be relied upon to be motivated by a desire, as you say, "to avoid drama or misunderstanding by using a means other than asking to confirm or contradict a suspicion," we likely wouldn't need to have this discussion at all.

5 hours ago, Bitsy Buccaneer said:

I've also used groups to see if friends in other time zones were still logging in. Both have serious health problems. One had a dodgy internet connection so that was probably why she disappeared. But the last I heard from the other she was going into hospital for a major operation. She unticked and reticked people as her energy levels fluctuated, so that by itself wasn't worrying. She never reticked me after the operation though and when I worried about her, just wanting to know if she'd made it through or if the world had lost her, all I could do was send an IM to a presumably capped account and check a group we were both in.

I am pretty sure I've never used these tools to "check up" on someone, either friend or lover, but I'll freely admit that I have employed them in a manner not unlike what you describe here. In fact, when I first began to log in regularly again, in October, I did go through some of my group lists to determine the last log-ins of some of my more important friends and colleagues. I discovered, of course, that some had been long gone from SL, but that others were still reasonably active. That was useful information, in my case partially because it impacted upon the management of some of the groups in which I am an administrator or officer.

I have really mixed feelings about all of this, but your post has made me rethink my stance on the employment of these tools a bit. The problem, as is so often the case, is not the availability of these particular affordances, but rather with how they are used (or perhaps more frequently, misused). So, maybe the question should be, not "are there legitimate uses" for them, but rather, "are you using them in a legitimate way"?

Edited August 14, 2019 by Scylla Rhiadra

[Rolig Loon]

My "friends" list is 90% people who are current or former clients or tenants.  It also includes several close friends (real friends) who have died over the years or who have left SL.  I keep them there as a way of keeping them alive.  I remove only casual acquaintances, usually when I can no longer remember who they are.

[Scylla Rhiadra]

9 minutes ago, Rolig Loon said:

My "friends" list is 90% people who are current or former clients or tenants.  It also includes several close friends (real friends) who have died over the years or who have left SL.  I keep them there as a way of keeping them alive.  I remove only casual acquaintances, usually when I can no longer remember who they are.

Molly, I think, made reference to what is now a very old fashioned practice, I think, of distinguishing between a "friends" list, and a list of contact cards. In the Good Old Days, I seem to remember, it was much more common to hand out contact cards to casual acquaintances; I myself still give my contact card to noobs I've helped (although some complain about it). It's a shame that contact cards have fallen out of use, I think. I may start a one-woman movement to resuscitate them!

On the subject of very old "friends" about whom one remembers nothing -- last night I was IMed by an obscure member of my own friends list. I think I had met him exactly once, perhaps back in 2010: all that he could remember was that I had a bookstore which he remembered visiting. Like me (and a great many others, it would seem, right now), he's returned to SL on at least a trial basis after a number of years' absence, and I was one of the very few of his old friends who was actually online.

We had a really lovely extended chat, and I now know him probably somewhat better than I did when I first met him back whenever. So, there are, perhaps, some reasons not to prune one's friends list too severely.

[Madelaine McMasters]

11 minutes ago, Scylla Rhiadra said:

 I myself still give my contact card to noobs I've helped (although some complain about it).

Do they complain about being given your contact chard, or your help?

Edited August 14, 2019 by Madelaine McMasters
I think I need help.

[Scylla Rhiadra]

3 minutes ago, Madelaine McMasters said:

Do they complain about being given your contact hard

I'm Canadian: we're breastfed to the sights and sounds of hockey. Of course contact is always hard -- and preferably into the boards.

They are all most grateful whatever bits of information I dole out, of course. A few of them -- usually naked males with one or two adult groups only in their profiles -- seem to expect access to other kinds of "bits" however.