Friend Request - How do you know this person?

[Neumeric]

**Edit - Included and image of concept just for Gwarsbane**

http://i.imgur.com/leh3U97.png

Revised Concept:

Next to the name of the friend requestor, there is already a dropdown menu ( the little down arrow )

Just put some text in there that says:

You have 3 games in common
You have 4 friends in common
You're in a steam group with this person
You recently played CS:GO with this person

Something like that. I realize you can just view their profile to get this info, but this would be faster and more user-friendly.


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OLD Concept:

Here's a simple, yet useful idea:

When you're sending a friend request, there should be an option to send a message within the friend request. I get random friend requests from time to time, and it would be helpful if I knew how the person found me.

It would be a simple box for the friend requestor that says: How do you know this person?

... and they fill it out. Much like LinkedIn.

[Fox]

Ursprünglich geschrieben von Numeric:

Here's a simple, yet useful idea:

When you're sending a friend request, there should be an option to send a message within the friend request. I get random friend requests from time to time, and it would be helpful if I knew how the person found me.

It would be a simple box for the friend requestor that says: How do you know this person?

... and they fill it out. Much like LinkedIn.

This was asked to death already. Phishers would have a field day sending links in droves, and any link filter you can think of can be easily circumvented.

I'd also add big harrasing groups being able to directly PM their prey, but it's not a main argument.

So, no, it won't work out. AFAIK, Linkedin has a real name requirement and a professional userbase making it work, and the Steam community system lack both of them.

[Apoc]

People now are simply accepting the request thinking it's someone they know then get scammed in the chat. At least in the friend request they could filter links and put other security mechanics.

Or at least put a temporary friend option where you can at least chat with them to know who they are but they can't put links or other things. If it's legit you promote them to real friend and if not you can block them.

Right now it's a gamble, do you accept it and risk getting scammed or do you refuse it and risk missing a friend or someone legit.

It's 2015, if people know how to install and use steam but not to click on every links they see there's not much Steam can do if they take a broken link and repair it, the problem is deeper.

We can't stop the evolution of Steam because of people being naive.

[Neumeric]

Yeah I agree..

Something as simple as this would help:

Next to the name of the friend requestor, there is already a dropdown menu ( the little down arrow )

Just put some text in there that says:

You have 3 games in common
You have 4 friends in common
You're in a steam group with this person
You recently played CS:GO with this person

Something like that. I realize you can just view their profile to get this info, but this would be faster and more user-friendly.

[Gwarsbane]

This "feature" would very quickly become useless to know if you actually know the person or not.

If its something you type in, bot makers can just have it fill in text with an active link that could compromise a computer, or they could put an inactive link and tell people to copy and paste it into a browser. And sadly there are far too many people who do crap like that and who would actually click the links or copy and paste. So this feature now becomes dangerous and would never be put in.

If its some sort of drop down menu where you select a specific message, that becomes useless because bot makers can just have the bots randomly pick one. Also many people trying to add you will just pick the first one in the list because its the quickest choice. So this feature now becomes useless to actually tell what the person really wants.


This has been asked for and denied many times for the reasons posted above. There is no reason to even bother taking time to program it into steam because many people, including Valve, already know what will happen.

[Gwarsbane]

Ursprünglich geschrieben von Numeric:

Yeah I agree..

Something as simple as this would help:

Next to the name of the friend requestor, there is already a dropdown menu ( the little down arrow )

Just put some text in there that says:

You have 3 games in common
You have 4 friends in common
You're in a steam group with this person
You recently played CS:GO with this person

Something like that. I realize you can just view their profile to get this info, but this would be faster and more user-friendly.

I already look at that info, when I goto a persons profile. Putting it on the invite screen is pointless because again most people won't bother looking at it, they will just accept. It will also give bot makers a reason to add a feature to their bot to go to a bunch of groups and add them which in the end will help slow down steam. Think about thousands of bots adding thousands, 10s of thousands of public groups to every account they infect.

[Neumeric]

Ursprünglich geschrieben von Gwarsbane:

Ursprünglich geschrieben von Numeric:

Yeah I agree..

Something as simple as this would help:

Next to the name of the friend requestor, there is already a dropdown menu ( the little down arrow )

Just put some text in there that says:

You have 3 games in common
You have 4 friends in common
You're in a steam group with this person
You recently played CS:GO with this person

Something like that. I realize you can just view their profile to get this info, but this would be faster and more user-friendly.

I already look at that info, when I goto a persons profile. Putting it on the invite screen is pointless because again most people won't bother looking at it, they will just accept. It will also give bot makers a reason to add a feature to their bot to go to a bunch of groups and add them which in the end will help slow down steam. Think about thousands of bots adding thousands, 10s of thousands of public groups to every account they infect.

Like you said, the info is already accessible by viewing their profile, which makes your point about bots a moot one.

In my last post, I'm simply saying that it would be more user-friendly if this info was shown in a dropdown menu next to their name on your friends list. That's it.

Explain how that gives bots more access to your profile, or easier access.

Also, you really don't know what "most people" will do. I don't spontaneously accept friend requests. I'm willing to be there are a ton of people out there that don't accept every friend request they get.

Bots would be a non-issue if they used the "you have this in common" mechanic.

[Neumeric]

To prevent this topic from getting de-railed to a subject about bots. Again, here's the idea.

Next to the name of the friend requestor, there is already a dropdown menu ( the little down arrow )

Just put some text in there that says:

You have 3 games in common
You have 4 friends in common
You're in a steam group with this person
You recently played CS:GO with this person

Something like that. I realize you can just view their profile to get this info, but this would be faster and more user-friendly.

[Fox]

Ursprünglich geschrieben von Numeric:

To prevent this topic from getting de-railed to a subject about bots. Again, here's the idea.

Next to the name of the friend requestor, there is already a dropdown menu ( the little down arrow )

Just put some text in there that says:

You have 3 games in common
You have 4 friends in common
You're in a steam group with this person
You recently played CS:GO with this person

Something like that. I realize you can just view their profile to get this info, but this would be faster and more user-friendly.

To be honest, I do find this version more acceptable, as there's no easy way to phish other users.

For the Steam group, it may indeed be abused, but adding their rank (is he an officer ?) and/or their join date (is he an old member ?) might alleviate the issue.

[Gwarsbane]

Ursprünglich geschrieben von Numeric:

Like you said, the info is already accessible by viewing their profile, which makes your point about bots a moot one.

In my last post, I'm simply saying that it would be more user-friendly if this info was shown in a dropdown menu next to their name on your friends list. That's it.

Explain how that gives bots more access to your profile, or easier access.

Also, you really don't know what "most people" will do. I don't spontaneously accept friend requests. I'm willing to be there are a ton of people out there that don't accept every friend request they get.

Bots would be a non-issue if they used the "you have this in common" mechanic.

Ursprünglich geschrieben von Numeric:

To prevent this topic from getting de-railed to a subject about bots. Again, here's the idea.

Next to the name of the friend requestor, there is already a dropdown menu ( the little down arrow )

Just put some text in there that says:

You have 3 games in common
You have 4 friends in common
You're in a steam group with this person
You recently played CS:GO with this person

Something like that. I realize you can just view their profile to get this info, but this would be faster and more user-friendly.

When talking about features that could be used and abused by bots, you generally have to talk about bots.

Also the little pull down menu you suggest is virtually pointless because people generally don't bother going to a page with a simple click to see all this info anyway so putting all that info, which can be made useless by bots taking over peoples accounts anyway, would be pointless because it requires people to click on it and use their head and as has already been covered here there are many who don't.

[Neumeric]

1. The features mentioned cannot be abused by bots. If you're confident that bots can abuse it, explain how. Educate me please.

2. The feature may be pointless to you, but you don't speak for the entire steam community. Some people use some features on steam, others don't. For example: I don't care about achievements, but that doesn't mean that there aren't many people who do.

3. Revisiting ideas can be a good thing. Concepts get better with increased discussion and input. Simply saying "that won't work" or "no one will use it" backed up by opinions doesn't help.

I get it, you wouldn't use this feature. Cool. The only valid concern that you've brought up is bots, but you haven't explained how bots can abuse the new "you have this in common" feature.

So anyways...

[Gwarsbane]

Ursprünglich geschrieben von Numeric:

1. The features mentioned cannot be abused by bots. If you're confident that bots can abuse it, explain how. Educate me please.

I actually already explained this, bots can be programmed to randomly select this. How do you think bots get by stuff like CAPTCHAs? Its because the programmers for those bots, learn how the feature works, and programs their bots to beat it.

Ursprünglich geschrieben von Numeric:

2. The feature may be pointless to you, but you don't speak for the entire steam community. Some people use some features on steam, others don't. For example: I don't care about achievements, but that doesn't mean that there aren't many people who do.

No where did I say I speak for the whole community. I said the features you want are pointless and I pointed out why they were pointless.

I agree, achievements are pointless, but they also can't be abused to get people to click on links that can infect their computers to get their items and money and which will then be used to try to infect others.

Ursprünglich geschrieben von Numeric:

3. Revisiting ideas can be a good thing. Concepts get better with increased discussion and input. Simply saying "that won't work" or "no one will use it" backed up by opinions doesn't help.

I get it, you wouldn't use this feature. Cool. The only valid concern that you've brought up is bots, but you haven't explained how bots can abuse the new "you have this in common" feature.

So anyways...

I haven't just been saying it won't work. I have also been saying why it won't work. You just seem to ignore why it won't work. Just because you can't or won't accept the reasons why it won't work, doesn't mean they are wrong.

[Start_Running]

Yawn. Let's look at it this way. When in doubt ignore. Maybe pop over to the requesters profile page and leave a comment something to the tune of 'And you are?'

[Neumeric]

Ursprünglich geschrieben von Gwarsbane:

I actually already explained this, bots can be programmed to randomly select this. How do you think bots get by stuff like CAPTCHAs? Its because the programmers for those bots, learn how the feature works, and programs their bots to beat it.

It seems like you don't understand the concept.

Bots cannot SELECT the games that they have in common with you. They cannon SELECT the games that they have recently played with you. It would be IMPOSSIBLE.

No one is SELECTING ANYTHING. It would be pulled from the STEAM DATABASE. You can't hack games into your library, you either bought it, or you didn't.

You either have the games in common with the friend requestor, or you dont. THERE IS NO SELECTING

You either have friends in common, or you don't, there is no SELECTING.

This data is ALREADY stored in the steam database.

Also, CAPTCHAs have absolutley NOTHING to do with this. You have no clue how software or web applications pull data from a database. No idea. You simply don't know what you're talking about.

Holy CRAP.

[Neumeric]

I feel like I'm being trolled. I'm pretty sure I am. Oh well, moving on from this thread. klaters.

[󠀡󠀡󠀡]

But... I can see if they have games or friends in common by clicking on their avatar.

Plus they can always leave a comment or you can post 'do I know you' on their profile... Not that big of a deal.