hiding equipped items = frustrating, and less money for you.

[AloysiusWeasley]

Kaeth

Corinth Maxwell

panoptes

Am I the only person on Gaia who takes item collection and avatar assembly as a challenge? I never like a game if it's too easy.

No, you are most certainly not. Unfortunately, it's been said that the grand majority of changes over the past year (or so) were meant to do nothing but make things easier for everyone else to use, despite whether or not the veteran users already liked things as they were.

If items were easier to find, perhaps you could dedicate more time to the creative side of arranging an avatar in an aesthetically pleasing way. I dunno. Personally, there's nothing that makes me proud or satisfied in just having to work my a** off to find out what an item is.

Also lawl Corinth, your "veteran user" comment is completely irrelevant. There are plenty of veteran users in this thread, including myself, who support disabling the hide equip.

Gah this, and I love the fashion model comment, too.

@panoptes: I love putting together new avvies, I'll usually spend at least an hour making a new one. Collecting items...well, depending on what you're aiming for, that's likely a challenge, too. But having to struggle JUST to find out the name of an item? Not so much. Then it just strikes me as pointless, needless struggle.

[Princess_Running_Wolf]

Wait. . .What?!!!!! o.e

[Bitte Orca]

Sentry Elite

Bitte Orca

A point made earlier was that because TekTek allows anyone to easily circumvent the privacy settings, it's unnecessary for Gaia to keep the option intact.

It doesn't work if the profile does not show the equipped items, defeating your point.

Which brings me back to square one.

[Velvet-Evoker]

AloysiusWeasley

@panoptes: I love putting together new avvies, I'll usually spend at least an hour making a new one. Collecting items...well, depending on what you're aiming for, that's likely a challenge, too. But having to struggle JUST to find out the name of an item? Not so much. Then it just strikes me as pointless, needless struggle.

Exactly...I love the challenge of making an avatar and sometimes spend hours on one. But just clicking around to find the name of an item isn't really a challenge, it's just pointless busywork.

[Corinth Maxwell]

Chandimal

I too, was annoyed at the fact that one would hide their items. But then I also had to look at it from their perspective: if I bought something good, and worked hard to buy it, only to find if I left my item equipped list open for users to look at, moments later 10 other people have that exact SAME ITEM. And low and behold, the better items I had, the more I found people copying me. At first I pushed it away as coincidence. But when you find that they even copy the GLASSES... that's what really bothers me.

When I was dirt poor, All I ever did was browse the market place to fantasize about the items. And this slight obsession has made it so, if my boyfriend asks which item that person was wearing, I could straight away answer and tell him how much it costs. Which is a good thing, because then I get to buy him the item. smile Right now I'm questing for rainy day, for him. But nonetheless.

Yeah, it can be a bit frustrating. But it also doesn't take many years to figure out which item it was. Again, Tektek comes in handy. And if your around long enough, you will come to understand a lot about privacy.

I just like being original.

This. People crying "wah wah wah" and threatening to troll/ignore you just because you won't tell them the name of - or where to find - a certain item, is not only absolutely juvenile, it's completely laughable. rolleyes rofl

Now, if a person is polite and courteous, regardless of whether my equipped list is set to "private", then I'll of course be kind enough to identify a certain item for them. However, if the person is not only a trolling jerk, but also thinks they have an absolute right to treat me or anyone else like we're beneath them for having private equipped lists, then they don't really have any business even speaking to me to begin with, as I'm not obligated to put up with or deal with people who have such obnoxiously horrible attitude problems, that the words "respect" and "individuality" are inexcusably beyond their understanding. talk2hand

[npulse]

I love this idea.

Although it's easy to search tektek or take a screen shot and ask Q&A it's an inconvenience to do that. Having the equip list open take about 10 seconds to do while the other takes usually 3+ minutes.

Not to mention, if someone was going to beg, steal your avi, ect, they will do it regardless if you have the list up or not.

I can't count how many times I've seen an item I've loved but can't look and see what it is due to a list being blocked.

Also, some people say that you can just go to tektek and look up the color and where it's at on the avi. That won't always work if you have two items layering over each other. Like earlier today I was in towns and some girl had an avi with this really nice crown. I had no idea what crown it was and it turns out it was 2 items up there. I would of never found that on tektek.

EDIT: I just though I'd throw in there that usually if the list if blocked, I just ask the person in a comment or pm XD

[Sgt Otaku]

KawaiiKittenCalico

Agreed. I often see people wearing an item I don't recognize, but when I go to check out what they're wearing to try and figure it out, they don't allow viewing equipped items. How can I get an item for myself if I have no idea what it is? Often these people have no method for me to contact them, either. Profile comments are turned off or friends only, as are PMs, and so I have no way to ask them what that item is.

If it's something I like and is still in the cash shop, I might spend money on it, but I can't if I can't even know what it is.

For this reason they also need to change the "view equipped" list in the forums to mention the POSE being worn and not simply the item. I just tried to find out an item someone was wearing, and I could see their equipped list but I had no idea which item the pose was from.

I allow the viewing of my avies outfit lists, because i have 4 different outfits. most of the time, it realy is a matter of not knowing what that item is. although, asking for what pose an item is in is just inane. it should be a list of the items, and then the user has to figure out what item is what through process of elimination. most items are names based on what they are or the theme they fit into.

[StrawberryZ0mbie]

I will say that my list is currently enabled but for several months, I disabled it due to a weird, creepy and very obsessive person who liked to copy and clone my avatars. For me, it wasn’t a matter of ‘oh teh noes, she stoled my idea!’ so much as the fact that seeing a copy/clone of nearly every avatar I made by the same person time and time again, was a little creepy. It made me feel watched and examined and stressed me out quite a bit. Granted, there was more to the obsession and stalking than just avatar copying and the other things she was doing also contributed to the stress. But the avatar copying was the icing on the cake and continued even after much of the other nonsense was sorted out. And while dealing with the other mess, I didn’t want to also see this clone running around talking about how much work she put into her avatars on top of all the other crap she was pulling.

Did disabling the list deter her? Not completely. But it did keep her from copying some of the more obscure EI poses I use as well as some of the item layering I used to get certain looks. (And I can understand why people might want to conceal their clever layering of items. The avatars are a form of self expression and people enjoy preserving the uniqueness, such as it is, of their creativity for as long as possible. That is very understandable to me.) At the very least, I felt slightly vindicated, knowing she was going through that much more trouble to “stalk” me than she would have had the list been enabled.

While the list was disabled, I was never PMed but I was frequently asked in forums about items I had on and I always answered. I never wanted to conceal my avatar from the community at large just to be a jerk—just from one person who was harassing me.

And I feel it was my right to do so if I so wished (and obviously, I did.) To have someone come along and act like they have the right to keep me from having privacy or that I’m pathetic for trying to get a bit of peace of mind or deter a stalker who cleverly evaded TOS in a way that prevented me from outright reporting her, I feel, is just as "damaging" to the feel of the Gaia community as a user hiding what specific items they’re wearing. There’s no “logical reason” for the feature being there? Obviously Gaia felt there was at one time, since they added it. So rather than justifying the existence of the feature, really, people need to be justifying the removal of the feature.

And so far, I haven’t seen any significant arguments for its removal beyond “I find it inconvenient.” Which I don’t think is good enough to specifically take it away considering Gaia felt it was a good idea to add it and clearly a large portion of users utilize it.

Don’t get me wrong—I truly, truly understand that this feature is frustrating. I once saw a trouser/boot combination I really loved yet the user had the equipped list disabled and didn’t respond to my PM. So I spent the next twenty minutes scouring tektek until I found the item. Yesterday I saw someone with a leg/foot combination that made her avatar look like it was wearing spatted, Victorian boots. Again, disabled equipped list. Again, ten minutes of scouring tektek and trying creative layering combinations to come up with the one she was using. I actually find it both frustrating and fun to have to discover on my own what people are wearing.

But the frustration I feel does not, I think, invalidate someone else’s need for privacy—no matter what their reason is. Especially now that I’ve been in a position where I felt the need to hide my equipped list. And trying to invalidate the feature by labeling anyone who uses it as "childish" and "pathetic" is, well, childish and pathetic.

[Tori Aichikara]

StrawberryZ0mbie

I will say that my list is currently enabled but for several months, I disabled it due to a weird, creepy and very obsessive person who liked to copy and clone my avatars. For me, it wasn’t a matter of ‘oh teh noes, she stoled my idea!’ so much as the fact that seeing a copy/clone of nearly every avatar I made by the same person time and time again, was a little creepy. It made me feel watched and examined and stressed me out quite a bit. Granted, there was more to the obsession and stalking than just avatar copying and the other things she was doing also contributed to the stress. But the avatar copying was the icing on the cake and continued even after much of the other nonsense was sorted out. And while dealing with the other mess, I didn’t want to also see this clone running around talking about how much work she put into her avatars on top of all the other crap she was pulling.

Did disabling the list deter her? Not completely. But it did keep her from copying some of the more obscure EI poses I use as well as some of the item layering I used to get certain looks. (And I can understand why people might want to conceal their clever layering of items. The avatars are a form of self expression and people enjoy preserving the uniqueness, such as it is, of their creativity for as long as possible. That is very understandable to me.) At the very least, I felt slightly vindicated, knowing she was going through that much more trouble to “stalk” me than she would have had the list been enabled.

While the list was disabled, I was never PMed but I was frequently asked in forums about items I had on and I always answered. I never wanted to conceal my avatar from the community at large just to be a jerk—just from one person who was harassing me.

And I feel it was my right to do so if I so wished (and obviously, I did.) To have someone come along and act like they have the right to keep me from having privacy or that I’m pathetic for trying to get a bit of peace of mind or deter a stalker who cleverly evaded TOS in a way that prevented me from outright reporting her, I feel, is just as "damaging" to the feel of the Gaia community as a user hiding what specific items they’re wearing. There’s no “logical reason” for the feature being there? Obviously Gaia felt there was at one time, since they added it. So rather than justifying the existence of the feature, really, people need to be justifying the removal of the feature.

And so far, I haven’t seen any significant arguments for its removal beyond “I find it inconvenient.” Which I don’t think is good enough to specifically take it away considering Gaia felt it was a good idea to add it and clearly a large portion of users utilize it.

Don’t get me wrong—I truly, truly understand that this feature is frustrating. I once saw a trouser/boot combination I really loved yet the user had the equipped list disabled and didn’t respond to my PM. So I spent the next twenty minutes scouring tektek until I found the item. Yesterday I saw someone with a leg/foot combination that made her avatar look like it was wearing spatted, Victorian boots. Again, disabled equipped list. Again, ten minutes of scouring tektek and trying creative layering combinations to come up with the one she was using. I actually find it both frustrating and fun to have to discover on my own what people are wearing.

But the frustration I feel does not, I think, invalidate someone else’s need for privacy—no matter what their reason is. Especially now that I’ve been in a position where I felt the need to hide my equipped list. And trying to invalidate the feature by labeling anyone who uses it as "childish" and "pathetic" is, well, childish and pathetic.

I had this exact thing happen to me as well. I only blocked my list and changed my username because of some other user trying to be my imposter, and people actually believed that this other user was me!

I blocked my equipped list for my safety, not because I don't want people stealing my avatar! If anybody ever needs to know what I'm wearing, I'll gladly tell them!

[Cabron the Swan]

I'm ambivalent about this. Usually I don't mind someone seeing what I have equipped, but when I'm doing a bald glitch or cropping a hairstyle with items, I don't want everyone to know my tricks, you know? wink

Maybe they could make it so you could hide certain items on your avatar. That would (hopefully) encourage more users to keep at least portions of their equipped list available for people who want to know what's what.

[panoptes]

Lady Psycho Sexy

I'm ambivalent about this. Usually I don't mind someone seeing what I have equipped, but when I'm doing a bald glitch or cropping a hairstyle with items, I don't want everyone to know my tricks, you know? wink

Maybe they could make it so you could hide certain items on your avatar. That would (hopefully) encourage more users to keep at least portions of their equipped list available for people who want to know what's what.

this sounds like a pretty decent idea

when i'm entered into contests where there's a challenge theme, i don't want other contestants to know how i got my look, and neither do i want to the contest holder to judge my avatar by the items i used, how expensive they are, etc. ... unless the challenge was all CS items or all GS or whatever, that information is not neccessary for judging

but if people want know about my shoes or whatever it is that i don't care about, i could save them the time by checklisting them and having it show up

[Beth Phoenix23]

There have been many time's when I want an item and I cant have it because someone has their equipped list not visible. I personally don’t get why people do it. Are people that afraid that of all the thousands of Gaian's that go on Gaia, that someone is going to take the time to copy every item you have?

So what if you see someone with that same item that you have, if there not copying every single item you are what's the point of not having it not visible. I find this kind of conceited. You’re the not only person on Gaia, people are ALWAYS going to have the same or one item you have on.

[A.D.1492]

I very much dislike the hide-equipped-item-list option. There are too many new items coming too fast and almost all of them have lots of new poses. It is just impossible for me to keep track.

So when I see an item on an user, I want to know what it is and buy it asap.

The deterring of beggars through private list is IMO a weak argument. Maybe I frequent the wrong forums but I usually walk around with am obvious 100+m on my avi with zero beggars for months.