OpenUru.org

Marten wrote:Buddy lists, even multiple buddy lists, are fine for organizational purposes but should not be tied to chatting.

Was there a "ignore chat from people if not on my list", if not we can add one

This would partly solve the issue, however you would still have to contend with people on your buddy list who spam you.

Sadly programming does'nt solve who you pick as buddies

DarK wrote:Was there a "ignore chat from people if not on my list", if not we can add one

This would partly solve the issue, however you would still have to contend with people on your buddy list who spam you.

Sadly programming does'nt solve who you pick as buddies

No, but it should involve keeping the people who pick you as buddies from spamming you any time they say something to the rest of their buddy list, especially when you haven't taken the step of adding them to your buddy list as well... It isn't so much people on my buddy list spamming me as it is people who have me on their buddy list spamming me that I think needs to be addressed. Lemme tell you, it really sucked being a ResEng the day of or the day after a new Age was released... it was often almost impossible to follow the chat in Beginner's Bevin orientations because of the buddy chat coming to me from everyone who had added me to their buddy list just to keep track of which ResEngs were online.

DarK wrote:Was there a "ignore chat from people if not on my list", if not we can add one

If I've picked up Grogyan's proposal correctly here, the suggestion is that a player can create a "chat/party channel" but can't actually add anyone else to it; instead other players have to subscribe to the channel (i.e. opt in) to receive the chat. From the description of Grogyan's UI, I guess you can then subsequently elect to ignore a channel if you feel like it.

While you might still have the Buddy and 'Hood lists, it would then make sense to disable selecting the list headings as "chat targets" but still allow you select an individual character within those lists, so you can still get in touch with individuals on an ad hoc basis, and without the risk of accidental spamming (I've done that a few times ). You wouldn't need those lists to be selectable en masse as each hood or Guild or any other group could have their own channels for you to opt in to.

Quite the opposite Mac_Fife, you can add anyone you like to the channel, but to maybe save on spam, there might have to be a dialog box with an Ok, decline buttons on it

You can still opt in

Whats your thoughts on it?

Grogyan wrote:... there might have to be a dialog box with an Ok, decline buttons on it

Do you mean the "owner" adds people to the channel, then those people get a pop-up dialog message like "[owner] has invited you to join [channel_name]" with Accept and Decline buttons? Personally, I still think that's a bit intrusive, although something that only appears somewhere in the "Big Ki view" might be OK.

But I still think it's better for the channel owner to advertise his channel elsewhere (forums, Ki-mails, whatever) and get people to opt-in rather than forcing people to opt-out. Some especially popular folks (ResEngs in Alahmnat's example) could end up getting swamped with invites.

/me agrees with Mac_Fife.

Why not something likened to IRC? /list, /join, /users, and /part aren't that difficult to remember and there could be horrid little buttons for the CLI impaired. Each age could be designated a default channel and 'special' channels could be created by users. Doing a "/list" would show all available channels, # users in each, and whether the channel is public or private.

Trying to make not too complex.

I must say that I agree with the original concept of "opt ins", advertise on forums and such, for chat channels, going back a bit, how do you feel about the party system created from a chat channel?

Eg Mac_Fife's group
He opts me in, and can opt anyone else in
but if I want to opt into the part say Alahmnat, how would that part work?

Would he have to ask Mac_Fife, who has exclusive rights, or me, send an invite to "join Mac_Fife's group"

Excuse this but you’re over engineering all this, and it’s annoying me!

DarK's Buddy List
SomeOne
Evr Three

EnyTwo's Buddy List
DarK
Not Here
Really Not Here
WowGone
SomeOne

So EnyTwo spams their entire buddy list, and everyone on that list gets the message

However EnyTwo is not on DarK's List and he has the "receive chat only from buddies" checked, so DarK does not get the spam.

Now if you want to ignore a specific persons chat because there been a n00b, we can have a specific ignore options per buddy.

If you want to chat to a sub list on your buddies, we add groups and you arrange.

Not that hard!

Yeah, its getting overly complex, and we're not even sure how the party system will work.

I like your suggestions Dark

Something like inside the Big KI, next to each person's name that is in the party that you don't want to hear from, could just have a mute check box.

else as you say have a seperate buddy list off those that you'd like to hear from, or create chat sub channel tabs

I'm going to re-examine DarK's example, but throw a few big monkey wrenches into it - here's what's wrong with it. Sorry DarK - it isn't as simple as you've made it out to be.

DarK's Buddy List (changed from DarK's example)
EnyTwo
Evr Three

EnyTwo's Buddy List
DarK
Not Here
Really Not Here
WowGone
SomeOne

Step 1. EnyTwo spams their entire buddy list, and everyone on that list gets the message. DarK has EnyTwo on his buddy list, so he receives the message.

Step 2. DarK wants to make a witty reply. However, DarK cannot reply to the same group that received EnyTwo's message because most of those people aren't on his buddies list. He can either reply to his own buddies, which causes Evr Three (assuming he has DarK on his buddies list) to receive DarK's reply without having seen the original message, or, DarK can reply directly to EnyTwo only, and none of the other people who received the original message will be in on the discussion.

Not a shining example of elegant and intuitive design.

I will also point out that Alahmnat mentioned above how he had specific experience as a ResEng, and under that system, the "buddy chat" approach fails miserably. ResEngs do not have the luxury of setting "receive chat only from buddies". If they do that, they won't receive messages from people they don't know, who may be paging them for help. So, they are at the mercy of people who've added them to their BUDDIES and are spamming their buddies. And before anyone suggests it - ResEngs also cannot /ignore persons that do that, however annoying they may be - because those persons might also later page them for help.

The right solution is a chat channel system that is wholly opt-in. Buddy lists can still exist, but only individual names would be selectable, for one-on-one chat. This isn't complicated at all... and this is how other MMOs do it! I know some people are attached to how buddy lists worked in Uru, but sometimes, you have to realize: http://site.despair.com/blog/2007/10/18 ... tradition/