We should have a whitelist option for tells

[Quesse]

Whitelisting sounds good in theory but in the long run is likely something that would be really destructive to the community.

Reminds me of when SE decided to split the data centers. Some people complained that the community would suffer but most were willing to accept the trade-off for lower pings. So now all the JP that were on Sarga in 1.0 are gone and it really has made it less of a fun environment - at least for me.

At first not many people would whitelist but eventually everyone would and then the ability to connect with others is severely impaired.

If the real issue that people are upset about is spam from gilsellers, I would rather a way be found to more efficiently deal with spam. The OP doesn't really say why they want a whitelist for tells.

[Avenger]

Whitelisting sounds good in theory but in the long run is likely something that would be really destructive to the community.

...now all the JP that were on Sarga in 1.0 are gone and it really has made it less of a fun environment - at least for me.

At first not many people would whitelist but eventually everyone would and then the ability to connect with others is severely impaired.

I also miss the ability to play with players from Japan and all over the world, and it seems that the autotranslator is rarely needed!

Can you clearly articulate the situations where you want people who aren't on any of the categories that I mention (friends, fc members, ls members, party/alliance members, people on your whitelist, people you're trading with, etc.) to be able to send you private messages? In which of those cases would there be no acceptable replacement (e.g. /say, /shout, /invite, etc..)

[Avenger]

Whitelisting sounds good in theory but in the long run is likely something that would be really destructive to the community.
...At first not many people would whitelist but eventually everyone would and then the ability to connect with others is severely impaired.

Some of the (few) legitimate uses I've found for /tells to/from random people (i.e. not friends/fc/ls/party/trade/etc.) include:

- attempting to recruit new players to your free company
- attempting to recruit members for a party (rarely)
- thanking someone for something they've done for you
- asking someone directly for help
- talking to someone about their gear or something they're doing in the immediate area
- complaining about someone who is nearby (but not in your party/instance/etc.)
- talking to GMs

Dreufo also suggested:

- answering a question you just noticed from a random person after you've teleported elsewhere

In most (though not all) of these cases, I could probably get by with using /say (for anything that can be said publicly) or using /invite (or /trade) to create a private chat. Presumably GMs would accept all /tell messages.

[Avenger]

If the real issue that people are upset about is spam from gilsellers, I would rather a way be found to more efficiently deal with spam. The OP doesn't really say why they want a whitelist for tells.

As you suggest, I expect the main motivation is to avoid irritating RMT spammers abusing /tell (and other things like friend request!) I too would prefer if they could fix it in some other truly effective way, but since SE has been unable to fix the problem by other means since 2.0 (maybe 1.0) in FFXIV (and for 11+ years in FFXI), I'm not holding my breath. Whitelisting is a bit of a nuclear option, but it works really well for eliminating spam. A well-designed whitelist would allow everyone you want to hear from to send you messages while eliminating the people (spammers) you never want to hear from.