Modify the way "Friends" are added

[Fizzie41]

I recently received a message saying that "(A person that I've never heard of) has added you as a friend on OpenStreetMap", but when I clicked on the link to their user page, it said that that User does not exist.

Following advice, I raised the matter with the DWG as I was concerned about spam, & they advised that that user would have already been deleted, probably after somebody else reported them for the same reason.

I made some suggestions to prevent this from happening again, but they said I should raise them here.

"Making friends" shouldn't only be controlled by one side of the proposed new arrangement. If I decide that I want to be friends with you, then instead of you just getting a message that Fizzie41 is now your friend, you should get a message saying that "Fizzie41 (link to user page) would like to become your friend - do you agree? - Yes / No". If you say Yes, then I get a response saying that you have agreed; if No, I either get nothing back at all, or I get a polite "Sorry, your Friend request has been declined" message.

Further to that, is there any way for a User to see who has listed them as a friend?

Thanks,

Graeme

[tomhughes]

Well there are two approaches to "making friends" in use - the facebook model that requires agreement and the twitter model which doesn't. Though I think even facebook has one way follows as well now.

We chose to go with the second model.

Friending on OSM doesn't really do anything anyway - it's entirely harmless to the other party (you in this case) because other than sending you a notification it doesn't change anything for you.

All it really does is "bookmark" somebody so that they are included in a list of people that you can narrow down the trace and changeset views to just those people.

Probably the real answer is that we just shouldn't send notifications, and should maybe rename the feature as "follow" rather than "friend" to better reflect what it really does.

[Fizzie41]

Thanks Tom!

In that case, no, it's probably nothing to be concerned about then.

Although "follow", rather than "friend" is a good idea!

[matkoniecz]

Probably the real answer is that we just shouldn't send notifications

That would be a very good idea as scam accounts started to use this functionality (other people reporting, I also just got and reported such spam).