We should have a whitelist option for tells

[Avenger]

What's a white list?

It's a list of people that you could explicitly accept /tells (or other communication) from, in addition to other groups like friends, party members, ls members, people you're trading with, people you are in a duty or instance with, etc..

In FFXIV, this is similar to the way you can only send Moogle delivery messages and items to people who are on your friend list.

How much spam do you get from the delivery Moogle? Not much, unless you count the messages from Square Enix itself ("Thank you for playing FFXIV...") but those are usually things like veteran rewards, which you presumably want!

The main down side of applying this to /tell is that people won't be able to send you direct, private messages from anywhere in the world until you add them to one of your contact lists.

[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.

[Phe]

The white list is a good idea.

but seriously, not being able to receive tells in an instance or look on the LS list is something that I'd expect from beta verions
but not from a top tier MMORPG thats been out for one year and a half.

[Dreufo]

I've had the odd occasion where I am focusing on something and then teleport, then glance at the chat log and someone was asking about something I know the answer to but didn't see right away.

That has been the best use for /tell, aside from personal questions or comments to another random player.

[thunderbreak]

It's a list of people that you could explicitly accept /tells (or other communication) from, in addition to other groups like friends, party members, ls members, people you're trading with, people you are in a duty or instance with, etc..

In FFXIV, this is similar to the way you can only send Moogle delivery messages and items to people who are on your friend list.

How much spam do you get from the delivery Moogle? Not much, unless you count the messages from Square Enix itself ("Thank you for playing FFXIV...") but those are usually things like veteran rewards, which you presumably want!

The main down side of applying this to /tell is that people won't be able to send you direct, private messages from anywhere in the world until you add them to one of your contact lists.

Oh so it's a filter that can sent /tell through even is I'm set on /busy? That's pretty cool.

[Avenger]

Oh so it's a filter that can sent /tell through even is I'm set on /busy? That's pretty cool.

On a smartphone you can specify that people in a special contact list can call you even if the phone is in do-not-disturb mode, so you could imagine FFXIV providing a preference that certain people could send /tells to you even if you are /busy.

However, a well-implemented communication preferences system would make it unnecessary to use /busy just for the purpose of avoiding spam (rather than for its original purpose as a do-not-disturb mode.)

[Laraul]

We really should have a whitelist system in addition to the blacklist system. Have it so that it is a checkbox list of things we can choose:

1) Free company
2) Friends List
3) Linkshell members (by linkshell)
4) Custom Whitelist
5) All while in party finder as party leader. (except those on blacklist).

Obviously, also have the option to have this be optional.

In other words, everyone that can already contact you via other means may /tell you, while everyone who's only available method of communication would be /tell could not /tell you? And how would someone ask you to add them to your "custom list?" Send you a party invite first so they can ask you? What if your in a party already? How can they ask to join?

I don't think you've thought this through, have you.

[Avenger]

In other words, everyone that can already contact you via other means may /tell you, while everyone who's only available method of communication would be /tell could not /tell you? And how would someone ask you to add them to your "custom list?" Send you a party invite first so they can ask you? What if you're in a party already? How can they ask to join?

I don't think you've thought this through, have you.

In most cases (as I noted above) they should be able to use /say, /yell, or /shout.

The main thing that's lost is private communication to/from random people who aren't in your zone.

As an example, as Dreufo noted, you would no longer be able to quickly reply to a random /say or /shout you just noticed after you teleported.

Once you join a party, then /tell would work fine for private non-party conversation (and /p for party conversation of course.)

As I noted, I'd add a few more checkboxes, like allowing /tell from people you're trading with.

That being said, I think you have put your finger on a core assumption of the whitelist concept, which is that for certain forms of communication that can be readily abused, you may prefer to explicitly permit groups of people who you want to use them. And you are also correct in pointing out that certain forms of (random, global, private) communication which are currently permitted, easy, and occasionally useful or beneficial could become impossible or restricted under a whitelist system.

I'm also not looking forward to "spammer dotcom has invited you to a party."