Why do some people prefer talking in IM?

[carissabelle]

Sometimes i wonder why some people would rather talk in IM than in local.

Even if nobody is around... They could be on a completely empty sim and would still talk in IM.

That can be annoying sometimes because i like to keep my Conversations window closed, and just talk in local. After all i can see the chat appear at the bottom of my screen for a few seconds.

That way i can just "walk and talk" if you know what i mean...

Otherwise i would always have to walk, stop, click into the IM window, type a sentence, then click on the land and walk again...

Wouldnt it be easier to just talk in local when nobody is around?

 

[Dazler]

I agree. I access Second Life on a small laptop. If I chat using IMs, it is an additional window cluttering my screen and blocking my view of my environment. That is why I prefer using local chat.

[Caitlin Tobias]

There are a  lot of reasons to chat in IM, even when only with two people on an empty sim .

For one it can be the topic of conversation, sometimes you do not necessarily want others to drop in something private.

The main reason I am often in IM with my friend, even when we are just with the two of us on our empty sim, is that is it easier.

Specially when he is building or doing stuff on one of our buildings - while I am doing the landscaping and terraforming around it.This means we fly and run around all the time and it's just not handy to stay in chatrange for local chat all the time, when you are busy with large building and/or mountains . I have to add that in those cases we do not even type, but use voicechat, in IM. Perfect handsfree and nobody has to listen to our argueing .

When not building/terraforming, but just hanging around..yeah, then we prefer local chat.

 

 

[Brett Velinov]

I prefer talking in local chat, unless there is a particular reason for IM's.  Another thing  - what's with all these IM disclosers people have in there profiles about postings IM's?  I thought that was not allowed.

[Six Igaly]

One simple reason to start with: CHAT LAG

Second one: I'm usually building and most of my friends are. When i have a chat with someone he or she is usually at the other end of the grid. 

And a third reason: IM is personal and private. And since most of my conversations are personal and private i think it's a good match.

Then at last: IMO local chat is for the people who do clubs and stuff. On very rare occasions i will go to public events and yes then i tend to use local chat since it is a public place filled with strangers. But I can't really say you can have a conversation in such a crowded place. Probably that is why you see nothing but people yelling and screaming bull**bleep**. 

.

[Six Igaly]

I think you can have a disclosure but it does not mean a thing. One is not allowed to use any of it in public. So for all who have a disclosure about IM, you might as well state you are the pope, it means about just the same....NOTHING!!

[Syo Emerald]

IMs are good at very crowded places, especialy when everybody starts to use gestures and its hard o keep up with the textflow. Also on some topics IMs are better than open chat, I use it when I'm working to comunicate with other staff members about business topics, which are normaly not for everybodys eyes.

I also prefer IM if someone just want to talk with me. I'm often hanging around and to several other things, it can happen that I don't watch local chat every minute. But an IM makes a little sound and someone can get my attention faster than just tipping in local chat.

For normal conversations I prefer the local chat.

[Willow Danube]

Local chat clutters my view and sometimes when I'm concentrating on something the texts appearing out from nowhere just annoys me. Besides, you can't tell when the other person is replying to you or not if you do not have your typing AO activated. In IMs I can choose when to open and read it and I know when the person is about to reply to me.

I also prefer the privacy, if I want to local chat is because there will be more than one person that wants to listen to me or that I'm roleplaying or when I'm fighting with a teenager. I also do not think my neighbours/nearby listeners would appreciate it to know what part of my body is being sextext'd by another avatar in a place where we do not have a parcel control.

I also save IMs for later references, more for sentimental values.

[Tanee Almendros]

I prefer the general chat but sometimes it is impossible because there are a large number of users nearby and all typing at once. Sometimes we have a private conversation and although it seems that no one is around maybe there is someone in the same sim and so can read everything you write.
On the other hand is not a fable that there are users who, in violation of the TOS, use programs that allow them to read even the private IM or even know the IP address of others.
It's nice to use the general chat, but unfortunately there are those who in addition to being skilled come to Second Life to do wrong things.

[Venus Petrov]

---

Tanee Almendros wrote:

I prefer the

general

chat

but sometimes it is

impossible because

there are a large

number of users

nearby and all

typing at once

.

Sometimes we

have a private conversation

and although it

seems that

no one is around

maybe there is

someone

in the same

sim

and so

can read

everything you

write.

On the other hand

is not

a fable

that there are users

who, in violation

of the

TOS,

use programs

that allow them to

read even the

private

IM

or even

know the IP address

of others.

It's nice

to use the

general

chat

, but unfortunately

there are those who

in addition to being

skilled

come to

Second

Life

to do

wrong things.

---

Stop perpetuating this stuff.  There is absolutely no way someone who is not party to an IM chat can 'read' the chat of another.  Not unless you provide your chat logs to someone voluntarily.  Same with IP addresses. 

I prefer IM chat because it allows the conversation to flow freely without having to stop and say 'oh, switch to IM for this bit'.  As a DJ, I chat in local all the time when I am working.  My screen fills up with chat and sometimes gestures from patrons.  When I am not working, it is a relief to have a private, lag-free chat with a friend.

[Ceka Cianci]

i can't stand the chat on my screen..my general chat history is on rather than that fade away chat..

i have it and my IM's in one spot on my screen so i can click the tabs when they light up..how can someone that is in IM's keep up with general chat that fades away on the screen?

more times than not..when i'm in sl i'm in 3 or 4 or more different conversations at one time..if i am in the same room  i'll use gen mostly in passing or just meeting someone..

general chat usualy also has every other channle communication going on at the same time as well..so it's a bit cleaner in IM's..

Gen chat i mostly use when i'm talking to more than one person in a room..

IM's have nothing to do with security or privacy for me..they are just easier  and more organized so i don't miss something said..

[Mayalily]

Even if it's two people chatting, sometimes it's just more convenient to talk in IM because of being afk a lot and having real life happening, or other people in IM also.  I know local chat saves the conversation also, but having it in IM, saves from having to scroll through the local chat.  If I walk away from the keyboard when I'm talking with just one person, I fear they might not see right away, brb, or I have to get a drink of water or whatever.  If I'm going afk and even if you we are talking in local chat with only two of us, I still open their IM and say brb and give an approximate of how long I am going to be afk.  I don't sit at a keyboard constantly as I don't have a job yet.  Now when you have a job, you're not supposed to be afk.  However, they should give a little "break" so people can get water or their preferred drink, go to the bathroom, etc., even if they have a SL job. 

[Venus Petrov]

---

Mayalily wrote:

Even if it's two people chatting, sometimes it's just more convenient to talk in IM because of being afk a lot and having real life happening, or other people in IM also. 

I know local chat saves the conversation also

, but having it in IM, saves from having to scroll through the local chat.  If I walk away from the keyboard when I'm talking with just one person, I fear they might not see right away, brb, or I have to get a drink of water or whatever.  If I'm going afk and even if you we are talking in local chat with only two of us, I still open their IM and say brb and give an approximate of how long I am going to be afk.  I don't sit at a keyboard constantly as I don't have a job yet.  Now when you have a job, you're not supposed to be afk. 

However, they should give a little "break" so people can get water or their preferred drink, go to the bathroom, etc., even if they have a SL job. 

---

Just two minor points:

1) Local chat, like IM chat, is saved only if you indicate you wish to save the chat in Preferences.  I do not save local chat.  I agree it is polite to tell anyone you are in IMs with that you will brb if you need to step away a few moments.

2) All of the jobs I have ever had or have in SL do allow me to go afk for a moment or two.  Particularly if you are working a two-hour or more stretch.  Everyone needs to stand, stretch, fetch a beverage, whatever.  For example, the dancers in the club where I work will notify other dancers they will 'brb' in the club group chat.

[Mayalily]

---

Venus Petrov wrote:

---

Mayalily wrote:

Even if it's two people chatting, sometimes it's just more convenient to talk in IM because of being afk a lot and having real life happening, or other people in IM also. 

I know local chat saves the conversation also

, but having it in IM, saves from having to scroll through the local chat.  If I walk away from the keyboard when I'm talking with just one person, I fear they might not see right away, brb, or I have to get a drink of water or whatever.  If I'm going afk and even if you we are talking in local chat with only two of us, I still open their IM and say brb and give an approximate of how long I am going to be afk.  I don't sit at a keyboard constantly as I don't have a job yet.  Now when you have a job, you're not supposed to be afk. 

However, they should give a little "break" so people can get water or their preferred drink, go to the bathroom, etc., even if they have a SL job. 

---

.

2) All of the jobs I have ever had or have in SL do allow me to go afk for a moment or two.  Particularly if you are working a two-hour or more stretch.  Everyone needs to stand, stretch, fetch a beverage, whatever.  For example, the dancers in the club where I work will notify other dancers they will 'brb' in the club group chat.

---

They should give you like five minute breaks.  The hostess could cover for you for five minutes, and then when the hostess needs to go afk for five minutes, then the Dj could cover.  I couldn't go to the bathroom in a moment.  I'd need at least five minutes.

[Wildcat Furse]

if the chat is disturbing I just MUTE them .... always handy! :smileyhappy: *meows*

WILDCAT SHOUTS: I NEED TO GO TO THE TOILET .... BRB

WILDCAT SHOUTS: OMGGGGGG BRB ..... MY DAUGHTER JUST FELL FROM THE STAIRS ...OMG BRB ....BRB

[Venus Petrov]

Three minutes or five minutes.  There is no set 'limit' unless you are going to be afk like 10 mins or more.  So, anything is negotiable, as far as I am concerned. 

[Ceka Cianci]

where i worked..if you had to go afk for2 or 5 minutes you needed to step off the stage saying you would be right back..

if it was something like running and getting a drink or stretching that was no biggy..but if it was taking a break..then people needed to take a break from the stage as well..

there was so much afking going on back then that it brought on rules..we were making great money. there ..so lead dancers and managers got together and made rules about it..the least the dancers could do was to let others on the stage spots if they were not gonna be there..

a lot of it came on because of people walking into the club and tossing an IM to a dancer that was afk..it gave the club a bad outlook in that customers eyes..that and dancers waiting to get on stage  were losing stage time to ones not there taking up spots..

it wasn't a problem for the longest time..then we  had a bunch of dancers at one time period that just seemed to do it a lot..

so it hurt the other dancers..

that was our club..i don't judge how other clubs do their thing..we just had lots of traffic and people coming and going all the time..so IM's were always coming in heheheh

 

[Mayalily]

---

Ceka Cianci wrote:

where i worked..if you had to go afk for2 or 5 minutes you needed to step off the stage saying you would be right back..

if it was something like running and getting a drink or stretching that was no biggy..but if it was taking a break..then people needed to take a break from the stage as well..

there was so much afking going on back then that it brought on rules..we were making great money. there ..so lead dancers and managers got together and made rules about it..the least the dancers could do was to let others on the stage spots if they were not gonna be there..

a lot of it came on because of people walking into the club and tossing an IM to a dancer that was afk..it gave the club a bad outlook in that customers eyes..that and dancers waiting to get on stage  were losing stage time to ones not there taking up spots..

it wasn't a problem for the longest time..then we  had a bunch of dancers at one time period that just seemed to do it a lot..

so it hurt the other dancers..

that was our club..i don't judge how other clubs do their thing..we just had lots of traffic and people coming and going all the time..so IM's were always coming in heheheh

 

---

Oh, I see.  Just step off the stage when nature calls, then run back.  I understand with a job you can't be gone long and when a drink or nature calls it needs to be done properly with an announcement of a little powder room break, so it doesn't get all chaotic.  But, I was thinking with hostess and Dj they could just IM each other, but still tips could come in, so a little announcement of letting the people know what's going on so it doesn't get all chaotic makes sense. 

[Tanee Almendros]

Dear Venus

You don't need to accuse me of perpetuating anything. I think it's a little arrogant way to answer a post. If you think you are the owner of the absolute truth, then prove me that I am wrong:

1- Someone with the knowledge and skills can't read the IM's of others if they are not encrypted?, if not, why the need to encrypt?

2- Someone with the same technical skills is not able to know the IP address of another user? Why? As an example; how can an avatar recognize three different avatars  as belonging to the same user without having even communicated?

3 - What is an anti-bot?

4- Does not exist any program capable of these things?

My english is bad, I have no such technical skills and maybe I'm greatly mistaken, but at least I would like you to show it to me and not just saying that I am "perpetuating stuffs."

Thank you

[Ceera Murakami]

Well, I tend to prefer talking in IM, for several reasons:

I like to keep chat logs of my roleplay sessions with friends, and of business conversations. If I hold those conversations in IM, they don't get cluttered with notices that some Friend just logged on or off, or other nearby chatter.

IM allows me to focus on a specific conversation, and 'tune out' others nearby who are talking to each other, but not to me. I don't have to have my conversation cluttered with the DJ's chatter, or with the conversations of others nearby. In a busy place with lots of avatars talking in nearby chat at once, it can be impossible to pick out the thread of any one conversation between two individuals. IM makes that a no-brainer.

IM conversations are private. I can discuss intimate or professional matters without others overhearing the conversation.

I can hold multiple, unrelated IM conversations at once. So I could be in the same room with four friends, have a group IM chat going for Roleplay conversation, and a seperate IM conversation with two of them on OOC topics that may include information I wouldn't say in fromt of the others in the room.

If I happen to be using the current flavors of V2 or V3, nearby chat doesn't have a text entry field in its floater. That means that to keep track of past and current conversations I am forced to locate my chat floater at the bottom left of my screen, so I can enter text and read the conversation in the same part of the screen. An IM chat floater has the text entry field that moves with it. (This has *finally* been fixed in the development viewer for V3.)

(Edited to add: Also, if I need to step away from my computer for a moment, or have some other distraction, the conversation I was having remains there in the IM window, and doesn't scroll off the screen or get lost in a long scroll of nearby chat chatter.)

[Ceera Murakami]

1- Someone with the knowledge and skills can't read the IM's of others if they are not encrypted?, if not, why the need to encrypt?

No one has yet proven it to be possible for anyone but an LL employee to intercept anyone else's IM's, by any means. Some third party viewers offer added incryption to IM's in an effort to prevent Linden Lab from being able to read the IM messages, and as added protection in case someone ever does come up with a way to intercept normal IM messages. Normal users can not intercept those IM's. But Linden Lab can read the IM messages via admin access to their servers, if the viewer at each end isn't encrypting it. Does encryption stop LL employees from reading those IM's? Actually, I doubt that it does, since they have access to the server's back side traffic. But maybe that works.

2- Someone with the same technical skills is not able to know the IP address of another user? Why? As an example; how can an avatar recognize three different avatars as belonging to the same user without having even communicated?

There are ways to obtain an IP address of a user, but they are flawed and inaccurate as a method of identifying individual real Residents and their alts. People who sell systems like CDS and Redzone would love to have you believe that their scripted sensors can infallibly detect alts and IP addresses and other information. They are lying. All they can do is use tricks like seeing which avatars are in a parcel and accessing a media stream at that moment, and gather the IP addresses that access that media stream. Over a period of time they can say with some assurance that someone who repeatedly visited a parcel with their system's sensor in it has a particular IP address.

But that only tells part of the story.

I know one guy who wrote one of those so-called IP detection systems. I visited his sim with three other people present, and he was rattling off information about not only their IP address, but also their system specifications, OS type, and other info. I asked him what he could tell me about Ceera. His reply was "Ummm... nothing. Nothing at all. You're invisible. How are you blocking your data?" The answer was that I don't have auto-access to media turned on. Ceera exists in a silent SL, by preference. I don't enable parcel media, media on a prim, voice chat, or even local sound. And because my computer isn't asking his parcel and his media server for any data, he can't tell anything about me at all.

On the other side of the coin, those systems see every user that is behind a router as sharing the same IP address - that of the router. If five people in one household have SL accounts, and they all use the Internet through their household router, those IP detection systems show the same IP for all of them. Until they reset their router, at which point all their IP addresses change at once. The same is true for students in a college dorm or school computer lab or users at a public library or an Internet cafe or restaurant that offers wi-fi access. They all share an IP address. So you could use your laptop one time at a restaurant to do a little shopping while waiting for your meal to be served, and get banned by an IP detection system because some griefer logged in from the same restaurant a week earlier and crashed four sims, with the same IP address shared by every person who used the free network access at that restaurant.

And if you have an Internet Service Provider that gives you an IP address, you could very well get assigned one that some other customer of that same ISP previously used - again possibly causing a false identification of your account as 'connected' with other people's accounts.

So, can IP's be detected? Yes and no - and not in a way that will give you reliable information.

3 - What is an anti-bot?

A 'bot' is an avatar account being run by a program instead of a real person. The account is 100% identical to any other account.

LL has a way to voluntarily tag an avatar account as one used by a bot - so, for example, a store that used 4 bots as clothing models doesn't get dinged for "traffic gaming" by having them logged in 24 x 7 in their store. By voluntarily tagging those accounts, LL can avoid counting them for purposes of search relevance. A program could, possibly, detect that voluntary tagging, but I am unaware of any script command that makes that possible.

As with CDS and Redzone, there are people out there that would love to sell you gadgets that they claim can detect bots. They mostly rely on the same methods as IP detectors, and have the same flaws. They are not reliable, or accurate.

4- Does not exist any program capable of these things?

For IM interception, no, not at all. For IP detection and bot detection, there are faulty and flawed attempts that indicate some probility, but are not accurate or trustworthy.

[Ceka Cianci]

---

Mayalily wrote:

---

Ceka Cianci wrote:

where i worked..if you had to go afk for2 or 5 minutes you needed to step off the stage saying you would be right back..

if it was something like running and getting a drink or stretching that was no biggy..but if it was taking a break..then people needed to take a break from the stage as well..

there was so much afking going on back then that it brought on rules..we were making great money. there ..so lead dancers and managers got together and made rules about it..the least the dancers could do was to let others on the stage spots if they were not gonna be there..

a lot of it came on because of people walking into the club and tossing an IM to a dancer that was afk..it gave the club a bad outlook in that customers eyes..that and dancers waiting to get on stage  were losing stage time to ones not there taking up spots..

it wasn't a problem for the longest time..then we  had a bunch of dancers at one time period that just seemed to do it a lot..

so it hurt the other dancers..

that was our club..i don't judge how other clubs do their thing..we just had lots of traffic and people coming and going all the time..so IM's were always coming in heheheh

 

---

Oh, I see.  Just step off the stage when nature calls, then run back.  I understand with a job you can't be gone long and when a drink or nature calls it needs to be done properly with an announcement of a little powder room break, so it doesn't get all chaotic.  But, I was thinking with hostess and Dj they could just IM each other, but still tips could come in, so a little announcement of letting the people know what's going on so it doesn't get all chaotic makes sense. 

---

thats just how we handled it when it  was getting noticed and abused and happening a lot..

i'm sure lots of places were different..our avg was about 60 to 80 people in the club all day long..a lot coming and going ..so it was common for dancers to be loadedup on IM's all the time..one afk getting IM's that don't respond can make the club look like we had bots on stage..

so we had to put a stop to it..

[LittleMe Jewell]

LOL - are you related to Qwalyphi Korpov?

I prefer IM for individual conversations with people for a few reasons - I can talk freely without worrying that what I'm saying is being seen by anyone else and I have a separate log of the conversations with people that I can refer back to. 

I use local chat for joining in on the general conversation at parties and such, but sometimes even at a party I will have an IM conversation with someone because it is a one-to-one conversation that I specifically do not want others involved in.  Also, if I run in to someone I know at a store or something, and if the current chat isn't already scrolling along like crazy, I'll talk to them in local chat. 

[Melita Magic]

If you are walking and typing then you are probably constantly walking out of their chat range. They can't 'hear' (read) you any more. 

IMs though will be read wherever you are both standing. So either stand still or type in IM. heh

[Tanee Almendros]

That's what I call an answer!