What is the use of Contacts?

I don't use the contact feature but if you want to PM regularly with a group of people, it can be useful for that.

My experience with it is kind of like yours- I get a ton of requests from people who never write to me and never post on the site.

I approve all contact requests and have only deleted 2 or 3 people later on.  When you're new on a site you don't know anybody.  Having contacts helps alleviate that.  If I can make people feel a little more welcome by simply clicking the accept button, why not?

Am I cool for having a lot of contact?  No.  I'm inherently cool.  It's my curse.  Are other people cool for being on my contact list?  If it makes them feel better, why not?

Some people collecting coins, other collect contacts...

ECS wrote:

I don't use the contact feature but if you want to PM regularly with a group of people, it can be useful for that.

My experience with it is kind of like yours- I get a ton of requests from people who never write to me and never post on the site.

So you can actually group contacts?  Say like you want to PM "my purple friends" and it'll send a PM to the five people you have in that contact group?

Yo, purple friends.  Let's hang out at my place on Friday.  I"m inviting some magenta people over.

HaileyinHongKong wrote:

I approve all contact requests and have only deleted 2 or 3 people later on.  When you're new on a site you don't know anybody.  Having contacts helps alleviate that.  If I can make people feel a little more welcome by simply clicking the accept button, why not?

Am I cool for having a lot of contact?  No.  I'm inherently cool.  It's my curse.  Are other people cool for being on my contact list?  If it makes them feel better, why not?

This is an interesting point of view.
But what is the meaning of having contacts when you don't pm them once and a while?
Isn't a contact meant to be that you have some regular or more private interaction with?

Somehow I have a very difficult time envisioning you being deluged with Contact Requests, TDH.

Primadonna wrote:

This is an interesting point of view.
But what is the meaning of having contacts when you don't pm them once and a while?
Isn't a contact meant to be that you have some regular or more private interaction with?

The only way to know if people are PMing their contacts is to keep track of who sends PMs to whom.  That would just be creepy.

Is it creepy to keep track on your own contacts?

If you're worried about your own number of contacts, it's pretty easy to trim the fat.

You, again? I use contacts all the time. I can't remember other usernames so I just point and click. You can also block people which would be useful in dealing with you.

Err ... all I can say is that our contacts system meaning will be much clearer very soon

For the little story at the beginning I thought it could be a "friends request" system, but I thought that a "contact request" would be better in our context (moving abroad). I also thought that friends could be a "sub group" of your contacts and not the opposite. Yes, we thought about creating contact groups, but so far we never got the chance (read enough time) to develop this feature. If we had 0.1% of facebook's capital ... you can't imagine how better EB would be. But in the meantime, we're making choices (as we can't develop everything) and we're doing our best to develop / improve things little by little

Julien, what you have done is amazing. Without this site I probably would have been put in a Brazilian prison for losing my mind here.

I think what you are seeing is the backlash of others that are appreciative of what you have done to help others.

Comments, questions and suggestions are fine but this has become sort of sarcastic vendetta on behalf of you know who.

Anyways, thanks for providing this valuable resource - for free!

wjwoodward wrote:

Somehow I have a very difficult time envisioning you being deluged with Contact Requests, TDH.

You would be surprised. THD has helped a lot of people, both on this site and his charity work in the real world. I guess you didn't read his threads on the charity events for the orphanages or the other things he does.

He even had a lot of people who wanted to nominate him for being a moderator in the Vietnam forums.