Your Friends??????

I think what it means is you can see where your friends posted, what they said and blog updates, if there even is that feature. Kinda like YouTube. 

I, too, would like to know how the friends list works and what it does/is for. How do you get friends and how do they get you. DO we send out invites to become friends like PM's {or "conversations" now} and what a mess the friends lists can sometimes be on other forums I'm aware of!!

All I know now is that *sniff* *sniff* it says I have "no friends" *sniff* *sniff*  {tear falls on cheek}

howmus

I looked up in the FAQs page about "YOUR FRIENDS" and all they say is "you can do things with your friends in ways you can't with others."  So....  Like what?

You can pick your nose and you can pick your friends, but you can't roll your friends into little green balls...

John

I've always viewed the "friends" thing as a lame attempt at a popularity contest.  Inasmuch as most of us know one another only through these forums, it seems a stretch to be more than just acquaintances, and I think that making it to be anything beyond that appears a little desperate. 

If your posts are interesting to me in some way, I'll read them (and perhaps respond) and I hope that you'll do the same.  If I don't, please don't be offended. 

Wayne

I found, to my surprise, that I have 16 friends...already!  How did that happen?  And who asked me?!!! 

I agree with Doc Wayne...I am pretty uneasy about the whole concept, and although I have never rejected a request on the other forums where this is common, I haven't exactly tripped over myself to seek similar relationships with anyone.  It's just not me.

-Crandell

 You only have the friends if you click that link and then accept them. The bold number in parenthesis is the number of pending requests. I had a bunch but I only know who some of them are so those are the ones I accepted.

 Kind of like Facebook, anyone can request to be your friend, but only you can actually allow them. I dunno how useful it will be - this is one of the things I mentioned when beta testing this new software. I HAVE a Facebook account, but I'm lucky if I log in once a week. Hourly status updates? Like I have time for that...

                                --Randy

selector

I found, to my surprise, that I have 16 friends...already!  How did that happen?  And who asked me?!!!

If Forum Management is following any of this, I'd like to go on record as thoroughly disliking the "friending" concept. It's juvenile and reminiscent of the high school cliques that so many of us do not remember fondly.

Even if we have no intention of initiating a "friending," we run the risk of alienating someone else who attempts to "friend" us by not responding to their offer of friendship. It's a no win situation for anyone opposed to this nonsense.

Please get rid of it.

SRN -- Not on Facebook and never will be.

 I  all so have some built in friends, 10 of them. Only thing I am afraid of is if I click on them, could they instant PM me. Other words, they start a instant chat while I am typing a answer or question to another post?  Instant message is the term, I hated that when I was using AOL. I have times for my friends, but not while I am typing. I am a slow typer.

                          Cuda Ken

I DO agree that the "friend" concept is rather lame, and amounts to a popularity contest that could lead to trouble like on Facebook. I don't do facebook or the like so I don't have to worry about all the "friending" and whom my "friends" are "friending" that get mixed up in my "friends" or access to my account stuff. I don't need to keep track of a bunch of "friends" as well. Then there is the friending concept of banning someone from being a friend and a whole bunch of other unnecessary stuff taht may come up.

I think because that is the way I feel that I shall not extend any invites to people to be my friend, nor shall I accept any "friend" offers. I do have some here I would consider an online friend in crime here on this forum,and know some consider me a friend in crime here as well, as they have said so. That would be all that was necessary. Who likes me as a friend and who doesn't isn't necessary for me to participate here. SO I shall remain "friendless" here *sniff* *sniff* {cry me a river, my friends}.

Besides, "friending" can be forged here in the Diner where there is an atmosphere of comraderie and caring for others that seems to exist, and by "conversations" {old PM's} if one really wants to get together with/meet up with or build a friendship outside of the forum here, or be "friendly" here on the forum.

Yes!  I see I have two friend requests, all it shows is their screen name, not their real name.  Can't see how this is useful if you don't know who the persons are.   And like others, I don't really want/need to be anyones' friend on this or any other list. 

I keep my Facebook friends to close friends and family, look at it as sharing information among friends and not with the world.   I semi regularly turn down friend requests from others as they have no need to see/hear about my personal goings on.   I use it mostly to share photos of family, events and such.   I tell them if they have a specific question/subject they need to contact me with, I will reply that way.   Same here.

This time posting as a moderator, in keeping with my previous reply, it would be at the very best questionable for me to accept some invitations to be friends and not others.   It would be tantamount to choosing favourites.  In order to be as free from personal bias as I can, I must treat everyone with the same objectivity.  As a human coming to the 'job' with history and well-established values and interests, it is already hard enough to be objective and impartial in my decision-making.  Why burden that process with an even more concrete falling-on-one-side-of-the-fence?

-Crandell

selector

This time posting as a moderator, in keeping with my previous reply, it would be at the very best questionable for me to accept some invitations to be friends and not others.   It would be tantamount to choosing favourites.  In order to be as free from personal bias as I can, I must treat everyone with the same objectivity. 

-Crandell

That is a problem I see on another forum I am on. People can choose to block posts from a  certain member or from people who are not on their friends list. This results in animosity among the "forbidden" would be posters, who then start a whole new unecessary thread to get their "reply" or "dig" into a post in that they were blocked from posting to.

Also, I have had some somewhat nasty messages sent to me after I have denied a "friend request" from someone who I barely know online asking WHY or How COuld I deny them the "friends" request. It works like facebook there in that it allows "your friends" access to all your "friend's" "friends" etc. and so I stopped taking requests all together and then turned off the access for the "friends" I already had. SOme people of course will "friend" anyone just to amass a gaggle of friends and access to as many as they can get. I found it to be more a frustrating thing than a benefit so I now treat eveyone the same...I deny friendship requests and don't ask anyone to be a friend on that forum anymore.

I have decided that here I will not take friends nor ask anyone to be a friend, treating everyone the same.

galaxy

I have decided that here I will not take friends nor ask anyone to be a friend, treating everyone the same.

Same here!  It would be nice to have a little check mark thingy where we could get rid of them, aka: just block/disable anything to do with the "friends" part of the forum and still be able to PM (aka: Conversations....).

73

So does this mean " if " I get a friend, my wife will have to have a big funeral for me when I croak, instead of burying me in the back forty with her dogs. Their going to drink all my I just know it.

                                                                             Brent

It says I have made 6 requests to be "friends", apparently anyone I have PM'd in the past is considered by the new software to be a friend or an unanswered request to be a friend. I deleted most of them except for the cool dudes here, those are still open.  

Maybe I can shed some light on the whole "Friends" concept for you guys.  The community software that we use to manage the forums uses friiendships as a means of allowing you to communicate and interact with other community members on a somewhat more personal level.

One of the nice benefits of friendships is that they allow you to see the type of activity that your friends have been contributing to in the community.  Things such as forum posts, comments, gallery photo uploads, etc..  This activity currently can be seen on the main community page found here: http://cs.trains.com/.  It should be the second area called "Friends Activity".

Another nice benefit of friendships is the privacy factor.  You can update your profile to allow conversations (used to be called private messages) from just your friends if you want.  That way you are not getting messages from members that you are unfamiliar with.  You can also set your profile to not receive messages from anyone as well. 

*Note: To update your profile, click the Edit link next to Public Profile in the right column of the webpage by your avatar and display name.

Friendships also allow you to leave comments on your friends' profile pages.

Those are proably the main items that we use friendships for as of right now.  The community software we use allows us to do a lot more with them though, however at the current moment we wanted to keep things as simple as possible and just offer you guys the opportunity to start creating a list of friends if you wanted to.  In the future, depending on how in depth our forums and communities get, your friendship lists could play a larger part in how you interact with other members in the communty.  But for now it's pretty cut and dry.

For those of you that don't know how to send a request to another member, the following steps outline how to do it.

- Go to the members profile.  The easiest way to do this is to either click their avatar or their screenname whereever you see it in the communtiy.

- From their profile there should be a link towards the top that says "Add to Friends".  When you click it a new window should open up prompting you to enter a greeting to the member you are requesting as a friend.

I hope that explanation helps.  If even a little.  If anyone has any additional concerns about this please feel free to post and I'll do the best that I can to answer your questions.  Thanks guys.

Well, that may clear up a few things, but I still think it will cause more problems than it will solve.

I can see where a moderator or trains.com staff member should shy away from having friends as selector has surmised. They could be deemed as "playing favorites".

And I think I shall still opt out of the friendship leagues. If anyone wants to send me a conversation {Old PM's} they can. If I want to send one, I wouldn't hesitate, but would be disappointed if I wasn't allowed to simply based on the fact that I wasn't on someone's "friend" list.

As I said, I have seen the animosity, fights and disagreements it has caused on another forum I am on.

I haven't seen a single post by any forum member saying they like the "friends" idea. Granted, I may have missed one or two in other threads, but the thrust of the membership's 'druthers seem to be solidly no friends.

Why not poll the forum and ask how many want the friends feature and how many don't. Keep in mind that many of those who have commented in this thread indicate that beyond not wanting it, they are distinctly uncomfortable with it, and see problems ahead just from having it available.

Geared Steam

It says I have made 6 requests to be "friends", apparently anyone I have PM'd in the past is considered by the new software to be a friend or an unanswered request to be a friend. I deleted most of them except for the cool dudes here, those are still open.  

I received a "friends request" from you in my email. I don't know if I qualify as a "cool dude" here or not. But, as I have stated, I am not accepting it or any other such offer with no disrepect meant and total indifference to everyone.

Craig Kuhlow

Maybe I can shed some light on the whole "Friends" concept for you guys.  The community software that we use to manage the forums uses friiendships as a means of allowing you to communicate and interact with other community members on a somewhat more personal level.

One of the nice benefits of friendships is that they allow you to see the type of activity that your friends have been contributing to in the community.  Things such as forum posts, comments, gallery photo uploads, etc..  This activity currently can be seen on the main community page found here: http://cs.trains.com/.  It should be the second area called "Friends Activity".

Another nice benefit of friendships is the privacy factor.  You can update your profile to allow conversations (used to be called private messages) from just your friends if you want.  That way you are not getting messages from members that you are unfamiliar with.  You can also set your profile to not receive messages from anyone as well. 

*Note: To update your profile, click the Edit link next to Public Profile in the right column of the webpage by your avatar and display name.

Friendships also allow you to leave comments on your friends' profile pages.

Those are proably the main items that we use friendships for as of right now.  The community software we use allows us to do a lot more with them though, however at the current moment we wanted to keep things as simple as possible and just offer you guys the opportunity to start creating a list of friends if you wanted to.  In the future, depending on how in depth our forums and communities get, your friendship lists could play a larger part in how you interact with other members in the communty.  But for now it's pretty cut and dry.

For those of you that don't know how to send a request to another member, the following steps outline how to do it.

- Go to the members profile.  The easiest way to do this is to either click their avatar or their screenname whereever you see it in the communtiy.

- From their profile there should be a link towards the top that says "Add to Friends".  When you click it a new window should open up prompting you to enter a greeting to the member you are requesting as a friend.

I hope that explanation helps.  If even a little.  If anyone has any additional concerns about this please feel free to post and I'll do the best that I can to answer your questions.  Thanks guys.

Okay, my first question is why does everything have to be repeated from the original post when I try to quote only two lines?  Is this just a temporary glitch?  And if this has been answered elsewhere in this forum, I'd appreciate the link.

And my main question is are you saying that the ability to either send a private message and/or an e-mail has been deleted?  And that if I want to contact another forum member off-forum I have to make a friend request first?  If so, this does not seem to be an improvement.

Hi maxman.

I'll look into the highlighting of the quotes when I have a chance.  It was mentioned a couple times in the following thread for your reference.

http://cs.trains.com/trccs/forums/t/179103.aspx

Members still have the ability to send private messages to one another, most definately.  What I was referring to were some options that are available to you in regards to who can contact you.  If you go to the edit profile page, (if logged in you can access this page by clicking here), and then scroll down to the area called Conversations Configuration.  In this area you can choose who you can receive messages from.  By default this setting should be set to Everyone, meaning anyone can send you message.  However, if you wanted to update these settings you can change it so that only your friends can contact you, or no one at all if that is your preference.

Sorry about the confusion in regards to this.  I hope this clears things up a little.

  Crandell, you won't be my friend? You have better test than I thought!

I did let the 10 people that request to be my friend list become friends. You can never have to many friends till you win the lottery!

I need to reread the exploitation of the whole friend thing, but with the new  icon, well I am partaking of some right now.

               Cuda Ken

cudaken

 

 

 

               Cuda Ken

Must be nice having the Sun over the Yardarm while we in the West are still waiting.

                                                                     Brent

Craig Kuhlow

Hi maxman.

I'll look into the highlighting of the quotes when I have a chance.  It was mentioned a couple times in the following thread for your reference.

http://cs.trains.com/trccs/forums/t/179103.aspx

Members still have the ability to send private messages to one another, most definately.  What I was referring to were some options that are available to you in regards to who can contact you.  If you go to the edit profile page, (if logged in you can access this page by clicking here), and then scroll down to the area called Conversations Configuration.  In this area you can choose who you can receive messages from.  By default this setting should be set to Everyone, meaning anyone can send you message.  However, if you wanted to update these settings you can change it so that only your friends can contact you, or no one at all if that is your preference.

Sorry about the confusion in regards to this.  I hope this clears things up a little.

Craig:  Thank you for the answer.  But I'm still missing something with the PM/e-mail capability thing.  Before there was an option to do a PM/e-mail I thought when you had a contact option.  I'm just not seeing those two options pop up anywhere now.  Am I not looking in the correct place, or are we calling them something other than PM and e-mail now?

Thanks

Hi Maxman.

In this version of the software PM (private messages) are called Conversations.  There are a couple ways to send a message to another community member.  The basic ways of doing this though are by clicking the Start Conversation link in the lower right hand corner for a users post.  See screenshot below for reference.

Alternatively you can send a message to a member by first going to their profile.  You can view a members' profile by selecting their avatar or screen name anywhere on the site.  From their profile then there should be an option at the top for starting a conversation.  See screenshot below as an example of your profile.  If I wanted to contact you personally I would click the Start a Covnersation link.

Hope that helps.

I have one friend.  Is that enough?

Mark

Since almost all  people here are anonymous, there are only two contributors to this forum I've knowlingly met and spoken with for  more than a couple sentences with face-to-face.  There are a couple of other people I've met asking if I was The/that Mark Pierce who posts on the MR forum.

Mark (a lone wolf, mostly)

galaxy

 

Geared Steam:

 

It says I have made 6 requests to be "friends", apparently anyone I have PM'd in the past is considered by the new software to be a friend or an unanswered request to be a friend. I deleted most of them except for the cool dudes here, those are still open.  

 

 

I received a "friends request" from you in my email. I don't know if I qualify as a "cool dude" here or not. But, as I have stated, I am not accepting it or any other such offer with no disrepect meant and total indifference to everyone.

You apparently didn't read it, nor have sense of humor. No, you didn't qualify and that request fell into the same category as the others-deleted. No disrespect mind you, I really don't take this stuff that seriously.