Shoutbox

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Originally posted by Pappapishu
but, it could be like the wabcam thing, there could be the choice of letting people know through the icon or disable it!

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This is the idea, but there's a way to get to it. Not so simple
The fact is that it's a violation to ping silently in that way, but I'm sure there should be another way to do this without protocol terms violation. Touching the headers makes it obviously illegal, I'm afraid .

Let's say... sending a special character at the end of the name the first time a message sent in a IM-window and the receiver would acknowledge it with sending the character once along with the nickname back (and so each time an im-window is opened or a contact is added to the convo, just like adding the auto-message to the end of the nickname).
Of course it can be made optional so you can turn it off or ask the user during the setup if s/he wants to let others know s/he has MP! installed. Nice and clean.

PS.: It can be a series of characters so it cannot be easily hacked (microtime seed)

Nice idea

euhmmm... I thought all this would come up.... There is a confusion here...

The original idea is NOT invasion of privacy! (invasion of the protocol is another thing, that's true)....

With the /ping command YOU find out if YOUR contact has plus or not... In doing so, your contact MUST be warned about this, otherwise it is an invasion (Plus! does this by showing the text and thus not conflicting with privacy).

With the original suggestion, YOU tell OTHERS that you have plus!, not the other way around! You don't find out if someone else uses Plus! (that's why there is /ping), You tell others that you have Plus!. So there is NO invasion of privacy. And this is only send to a contact, when you start a conversation.

I was discussing bots, not just your contacts. It isn't very handy if you have to /ping each time you want to determine if someone has MP, cause that will be needed.

Again, may I remind you I talk to nearly 1000 different people a month, which makes it quite frustrating to find out if someone has plus, or to ask them each time yatty yatty ya.

I don't see any privacy violation or anything with this, especially if you can disable or enable it to will.

Privacy is not violated as long as there's an option to keep some information private. The way I suggest, violates neither the protocol nor the privacy. If you want to tell others you have MP!, it tells, if you don't there are two ways:
1- Keep seeing if others have Plus! automatically (if they have the option enabled)
2- Not allow to see automatically if they have. So there's none secretly tracking Plus! users. Ping feature should still be used in those cases. This would be just a way to prevent sun-glasses-wearing clients.

regardless of the option there's no violation, as said. And you would get a warning at setup or the first time, so you can set whether you want this to happen or not.

In my opinion, I defend the -avoiding theory, so it's right for people who kind of hide themselves from tell they're using Plus! (which I accept and respect) not to see others who don't do so.

If you're really worried about privacy, you could even handle groups or single contacts to be able to see this info sent by you. And even to be prompted each time you add someone to your list.

Sounds better now?

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quote:

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Originally posted by CookieRevised
With the original suggestion, YOU tell OTHERS that you have plus!, not the other way around! You don't find out if someone else uses Plus!

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I think you didn't get my explanation very well (very likely because of my poor English )
The information, ie the charachters automatically being sent, as long as the option is enabled, tells other MP! users you use MP!. Reglar users don't notice anything. This wuoldn't work as a PING (in the original meaning) but would let others find out if you have MP!.
And vice-versa, of course, because, when there's something sent, the client may sent an acknowledge back telling s/he's using MP!, too.

JM said: [We have a button that looks like this: feel free to use it].
But editing doesn't send an e-mail notification

KeyStorm, that's exactly what I said....

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Originally posted by KeyStorm
And vice-versa, of course, because, when there's something sent, the client may sent an acknowledge back telling s/he's using MP!, too.

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No, not vice versa, there is a small difference. There shouldn't be any acknowledgement. It still isn't: "let's see if someone uses plus!" (ack needs to be send, just like with the /ping)... It still is: "lets tell people I'm using plus!" (both clients send this to eachother, so no acknowledgement; just like sending /ping whenever you send a message, but without the other client responding to it). The client doesn't actively looks for the string. It gets the string parsed. There is a small difference there...

The only options that should be available (and turned off by default) is: "Tell others I use Plus!" and "show <something> if others use Plus!". This is indeed very similar of how the webcam-icon works.

So anyway, we mean the same... but I was more referring to other posters (including Patchou) who start talking about "let's see if someone is using plus!", which is different.

quote:

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Originally posted by CookieRevised
So anyway, we mean the same... but I was more referring to other posters (including Patchou) who start talking about "let's see if someone is using plus!", which is different.

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Yeah, I agree. But let's say I open a convo with you, and I don't have MP! installed: nothing will be sent along with my name. So it's rather useless that you send the information I won't parse in any way. If I had sent this information, and you don't have MP! nothing would happen, and I would not know whether you haven't MP! installed or you simply disabled the feature.
If we both had MP! (just like we do ) And I opened a convo with you, I'd send the data and you would send your data, since you know my client can parse it.

I understand it's simple formality, but that would decrease load in bot servers, for example.

The other thing I meant with the sunglasses is to not allow people with this option disabled to see if others have Plus, but I think that would be a little dodgy, as the client should decide, although knowing who uses Plus, whether to show "X has MP!" or not.

To manage who does and who doesn't see that you use3 MP is useful, but its kinda overkill, after all, I think.

Hope Patchou finds this useful and understands there's no privacy violation

quote:

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Originally posted by KeyStorm
...let's say I open a convo with you, and I don't have MP! installed: nothing will be sent along with my name. So it's rather useless that you send the information I won't parse in any way.

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No it isn't, you could've installed plus! but disabled the "show I use plus!". So you will know I have Plus!, but I wouldn't know you have it. (that is without the sunglasses-theory)

quote:

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Originally posted by KeyStorm
I understand it's simple formality, but that would decrease load in bot servers, for example.

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I wouldn't worry about serverload, it would be only a few bytes more with each convo, so...

But to implement this like we would see isn't a privacy breach, but it is indeed illegal use of the protocol, so...

No, it isn't. in the name one can write whatever one wants, so there's no violation .

A couple of weird chars don't harm.

Well it would give us a reason to start using Plus in BOT2K3.. We never used it untill now (well except for a color function) because we do not want the person using it to be dependend on a piece (very nice piece though) of 3rd party software.

If we can easily detect if we can use MP with a user that would be the step to using it. We can only hold xx in our database, and keeping track of everyone's plus use, or preferences is too server consuming I'm afraid.

So yes, I urge you to think about it again...