Thoughts on /hide:

Purpose of this feature: Something to be used if there are some people who you really must avoid, completely, such that you feel that you can not afford to let them know when you are even on lily. At the same time, there are other people on lily that you wish to contact and that you trust. Chances are this combination will not happen often, but it's important that severe problems with one person do not force anyone to abandon lily [and thus force them to not be able to contact their trusted friends on lily].

Clover had a /cloak, and several of us felt that the way /cloak was implemented did not work well in practice. So, we called this new idea /hide, just so people would not think that it was exactly the same as /cloak. That was then, but after all these years have passed we could probably use either name...

Note that for this to have some chance of really working in practice, all the people who do know you are on will probably need to know who you feel you must avoid. Otherwise, you will be in trouble when they (someone you want to hide from) sends a /pa (or whatever) saying "Hey, Anyone seen Garance around?".

So, the idea is that if Garance types: /hide on

then the only users who will see that he is on are users that can see discussions which he is a member of. This is to give the user (garance) a way to completely hide from some other user(s), without causing all kinds of confusion (and a failure to hide) when Garance starts talking in a discussion the other user is also in. Note that joining computer or general would be a particularly stupid thing for a person to do when hiding. This is an on/off switch. Either you're hiding, or you aren't. The "status" column of /who output should include an indication that he's hiding, as a reminder to those who can see Garance.

needs thought, part 1:

There probably should be an way to specify exceptions to the effects of /hide. The person hiding can create discussions as a way of listing the exceptions ("exceptions" meaning the list of people they do want to be seen by). The question is, should there also be an explicit exception list, such that you can un-hide from a given person without creating a discussion.

needs thought, part 2:

what notification messages should appear when a person who is hiding joins/quits a discussion? To people in that discussion, you will "appear on lily" at the same time you join, but certainly you didn't just logon or just reattach to lily, so those messages aren't appropriate.

needs thought, part 3:

Presumably there needs to be an option on the client to enter hidden & without rejoining any discussions, so one could get on without generating all kinds of notification messages (thus giving you away, before you can /hide).

(all of the above is based on suggestions from from Maker, Shiva, Garance, and (to some degree) Nance, as well as other contributors along the way. These notes are from 1999, if not earlier)

-- GaranceDrosehn - 07 Aug 2003
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