Category: Zone BBS Suggestions and Feedback
Dear all at the Zone,
I have a small suggestion to make to the site. Why not allow people to add friends on the site, like Facebook or twitter?
That would be great!!!!
Thanks for taking notice.
How exactly would this work? Would it be like an automaticly generated Email that would be sent to everyone in your contact list? If so, you might as well just do it yourself. If you're thinking more along the lines of a referral system where you can earn site points by earning friends, I seem to remember it being suggested and shot down as people could create multiple accounts to gain points (seems like a lot of trouble for points but what do I know). If it's the former then it could possibly work, but given how much coding may be needed to make it happen, it mightn't be worth it. Those are my thoughts.
I'm completely opposed to the idea. Not because adding friends would fragment the already small community (though it would, and everyone knows it) or even because it might exclude outsiders from joining. I dislike the idea simply because the Zone isn't a website like Facebook or Twitter. Period. If users want to add friends and the like they can use Facebook or Twitter -- they both serve their purposes well. In many ways the Zone resembles more traditional and arguably old-styled communities and online forums started up in the late 90's and early 2000's, Communities where people interact on message boards and send private messages, etc. just because sites like Facebook now exist doesn't mean the Zone needs to mirror or copy the same style.
Twiggzie, what purpose would adding "friends" serve on a website like this anyway? For a friends feature to benefit the users's of the community you would almost need to change the entire structure of the website. The difference between Facebook and the Zone is where Facebook is designed for groups and clumps of users to friend each other and interact with their friends, the Zone is a larger community where people can participate in public conversations. Facebook users can also interact publicly and with strangers but it doesn't hold much significance, and the roles and levels of socialization on Facebook are completely different than the Zone. Both offer different types of socialization though with many of the same features and I'm not just talking about blind versus sighted. The Zone, like countless other message boards on the web, is a community where people interact with everyone else at large. Facebook is more like a community with many neighborhoods where residence only occasionally venture outside their hood.
But what's wrong with that? What would be the point of changing? The Zone is the Zone. It's not Facebook or Twitter, and it doesn't need to be. I've been here for almost five years and use the Zone and Facebook in very different ways. The second we start treating the Zone like Facebook in the way we interact I'm out of here. Drop the mentality that because something is the way it is, everything else should be, too.
not to mention there are already the little clicks on here anyway... with even no friend feature... it's kind of odd...
Oh i just meant that you could maybe add a friend that you had been talking to on the Zone, just like facebook.
I understand though that this wouldn't work, and that you would need to go on facebook or twitter for that.
I just thought of it as a suggestion, that's all. I think though that the idea is more to meet new people, so i completely understand that it prob wouldn't work.
Thanks for your feed back anyway, and have a good christmas!!!!!
I'm not a huge fan of this, either. As was already said, Facebook and Twitter are for that purpose. This site takes a different approach to interaction. I'm just not sure if it would be a good thing.
This would be extremely useful to keep track of those you know well instead of having to search for them you know eh?
True, you could narrow down your search in User Profiles, but the search system would probably have to be different to incorperate this.
I don't like the idea