Invisible for Premium

Category: Zone BBS Suggestions and Feedback

Post 1 by Jage (Zone BBS, a decade of madness) on Sunday, 23-Jan-2005 17:28:06

There's a new feature we're testing on the premium membership. You can now make your self invisible. This means that people won't see you log in or out, won't see you on the who's online, and won't see you if they view your profile. The catches? You can't send Quicknotes, cuz that would reveal who you are and that you're online. That and no one can reply to you privately anyway. You can still see public Quicknotes, since you would be able to see them in the history browser anyway.
To toggle your invisibility status, type /invis from any Quicknote box. Note that admins and CL's can still see you online.

Post 2 by Caitlin (I've now got the silver prolific poster award! wahoo!) on Sunday, 23-Jan-2005 23:51:44

Hi All. Just had a quick question about this. SO to go invisible you have to type /invis in your quicknote box. So wouldn't you have to log in first, and then go invisible? So then people might know it was you, right? But I guess there's no way out of this really. Caitlin

Post 3 by Witchcraft (Account disabled) on Monday, 24-Jan-2005 4:31:46

Very true, however, it remembers whether you were invisible or not when you log off, so, when you log back in your still invisible if you were so when you logged off.

Post 4 by Freya (This site is so "educational") on Monday, 24-Jan-2005 4:42:17

Aha! at last the invisible man, I knew I'd catch him in the end...

Post 5 by Char (The sexy canadian) on Monday, 24-Jan-2005 5:15:07

haha nice, now we are able to go on the zone being invisible and find out if anyone is talking about us... great idea.

Post 6 by wildebrew (We promised the world we'd tame it, what were we hoping for?) on Monday, 24-Jan-2005 8:54:02

Hmmmm, I do have a couple of comments/concerns for J (or admin of course if he gets to it first, muhahaha).
Supposing everyone starts using this feature all the time it will sort of kill the community spirit, you never know if your friends are online and the public discussions will be killed. And perhaps you may want to be invissible to certain people and only log on to talk to a certain person in which case not being ble to send private quick notes does not make sense. I think you need (ideally) to have a list of people that you can set, who see if you're online or not when they log in and that you can talk to over private quick notes.
I't s acool feature but I think it has a bit of a potential to ruin some of the online experience which is why I am a bit worried about this addition. Still it's intersesting and shows our site developing team is dilligently coming up with new ideas.
I'm going to formulate a better thought out response and post it either privately or send it to admin, I think a couple of changes would make this feature better.
cheers
-B

Post 7 by sugarbaby (The voice of reason) on Monday, 24-Jan-2005 9:36:39

well invisible for premium is technically a good idea but as B says above, if you wanna log in to talk to certain people in particular then they won't know you're on line etc, maybe, and this is a long shot because what I don't know about coding a site like this could fill a warehouse, lol, but, say if the ignore feature was changed so that if you put a user on ignore, that user couldn't see your status, i.e. you became invisible to that user? so therefore, you could log in, and ignore the users you didn't wanna talk to, and they'd not know your status etc, but those users you did wanna talk to wouldn't be on ignore and therefore could see you on line and talk to you etc. all those I T geeks now stand up and tell me that i ain't got a clue what i'm talking about and that it can't be done if that's the case, lol

Post 8 by Freya (This site is so "educational") on Monday, 24-Jan-2005 9:58:45

Can't see the point of it meself, I think it's a bit creepy having invisible people on here...

Post 9 by Emerald-Hourglass (Account disabled) on Monday, 24-Jan-2005 10:22:25

Yeah, it would be..

Post 10 by medical queen (This site is so "educational") on Monday, 24-Jan-2005 13:51:40

Why the hell would you want to be invisible anyway? Come on now! It's bad enough that some people have their quick notes turned off so that people won't even acknowledge them. I mean it doesn't make sense to me.

Post 11 by Caitlin (I've now got the silver prolific poster award! wahoo!) on Monday, 24-Jan-2005 14:20:12

How do you get uninvisible? Lol? Just wondering? Caitlin

Post 12 by Jage (Zone BBS, a decade of madness) on Monday, 24-Jan-2005 15:49:16

/invis again.
I don't see a lot of people using it in its current form, honestly. Cuz if you want to Quicknote at all, you can't be invisible. But there is a segment of the site that comes on mostly to play the games and doesn't use the Quicknotes as it is anyway, so this is more for them.

Post 13 by wildebrew (We promised the world we'd tame it, what were we hoping for?) on Monday, 24-Jan-2005 15:51:27

J, true, for those people it would be convenient I suppose, but they could also just turn their notes off and we'd at least see they are logged in, matter of taste I suppose.

Post 14 by pint size (Generic Zoner) on Monday, 24-Jan-2005 17:09:29

I think the invisible mode is quite good, actually. As an example, I for one, just like to come to the zone, play whatever games I want. And, if I want to, I can send private messages which is what I already do. The invisible mode has its advantages for specific games as well. Keep up the good work, team. For those who don't like the feature, then don't use it. If you have contact with friends on the zone, more than likely they won't use the feature. But it's nice for those who prefer not to be visible at all, or there may be times when one might want to be, so the status is optional. It'd be an entirely different story if one put them in invisible mode and couldn't get out of it! Smiles. Happy debating! Thanks to the team for all their hard work in all they do!.

Post 15 by Twinklestar09 (I've now got the bronze prolific poster award! now going for the silver award!) on Monday, 24-Jan-2005 18:43:19

I'm not on the Premium thing, but I agree with SugarBaby, that sounds like a good idea, to just be able to put people on ignore if you know who you don't want to see you on here. And yeah, there's also where you can turn Quicknotes off, like if you're playing a game or just don't feel like chatting. So I don't see much point in the invisibility feature, but I guess it would be cool for people who want that option.
Leilani

Post 16 by Jage (Zone BBS, a decade of madness) on Monday, 24-Jan-2005 18:46:44

Hey, thanks for all of the great feedback. Keep it up.

Post 17 by Blue Velvet (I've got the platinum golden silver bronze poster award.) on Tuesday, 25-Jan-2005 7:00:32

Well, I, for one, want to at least try this new feature but am confused about exactly where to type in the /invis. Help anyone?

Post 18 by wildebrew (We promised the world we'd tame it, what were we hoping for?) on Tuesday, 25-Jan-2005 8:49:30

CL
Just type it in the field where you would type quick notes or private notes .. just type /invis and you become invisible or vissible again if you are invissible already, the others won't see this as a quick note.
cheers
-B

Post 19 by Blue Velvet (I've got the platinum golden silver bronze poster award.) on Tuesday, 25-Jan-2005 9:04:54

Okay, I figured out how to become invisible, but now how do I get out of it? There is no edit field since I cannot send quicknotes when I am invisible.

Post 20 by Witchcraft (Account disabled) on Tuesday, 25-Jan-2005 10:53:57

There should still be an edit field. However, it should be labeled "command".

Post 21 by Blue Velvet (I've got the platinum golden silver bronze poster award.) on Tuesday, 25-Jan-2005 13:56:35

Now I'm feeling stupid, but I just don't find a place to type /invis to get my user name to show up again.

Post 22 by Blue Velvet (I've got the platinum golden silver bronze poster award.) on Tuesday, 25-Jan-2005 14:01:37

I finally figured it out! Yea! I had not only made my name invisible but also had all quick notes turned off. As soon as I changed my account so that only mass quicknotes were turned off, I could get into the command field to change my invisible status. Thanks to all who tried to help, but sometimes we just have to do some experimenting on our own to figure things out.

Post 23 by mstores (Newborn Zoner) on Tuesday, 25-Jan-2005 15:49:55

I really do like this idea, and I think it is a nifty one. I was confused when I logged in today. I odon't always keep up with the latest news here, 'cuz i haven't had time to log in much. *smile*

Post 24 by kool_turk (This site is so "educational") on Saturday, 29-Jan-2005 6:11:48

No point being invisible if it tels you someone's invisible. If your going to be invisible, it should be as if the user wasn't logged in.