Are options to fake user numbers good for winmx?

[GnarlySnarly]

Vote first - before reading my rant. 



I think it should be obvious  :shock: that people feel deceived and cheated    when they are searching for a room with lots of people, thinking they would have a better chance of finding some real, live interaction  - only to find either, the numbers of users has been faked with commands like FakeUsers=82 or by filling the room with huge numbers of clone bot connections,  to make it seem their is intelligent life in the universe. 

Yes, this may be effective initially to trick users into joining what is really a lame, socially impaired  :mrgreen: channel, but these practices tend to diminish the value of being able to search the channel list for REAL life and real users.  Users should be able to rely on the channel list information, so they can make a more discriminating  :roll: selection of which rooms to join.

The bad feelings    from being duped by faked user counts would seem to discourage    people from even trying to find some meaningful social connections and in the long run, are damaging to the winmx chatroom experience.

If others agree with this general concept, I would propose consideration of removing the support for faking user counts in future versions of the chatroom servers.  As to the 3rd party bot fakers, :twisted:  I would hope that the authors would look  :shock: at the end game and reconsider the 'usefulness' of such trick tools. :mrgreen:

[Bearded Blunder]

Sometimes it's hard to tell if a host is using a room filler or not.. I often have a long list of lurkers in mine who've never spoken...

[GhostShip]

I understand the social reasons why folks fake the room numbers but as someone who started out chat life in a small room and grew with it, I feel its counter productive and have often exited a room rather rapidly that was not as marked "on the tin".

[KM]

i agree, fake user counts can be counterproductive, and many hosts (in particular teen rooms...) think that just listing 600 users would help get more users, this is rubbish of course and can hurt the room more than it helps, however it can be useful for a room that has recently been restarted and is normally a busy room but currently only has 3 or 4 users in, to help point out the fact that it doesn't normally just have 3 or 4 users but more...

it's one of those features that has uses, but that many people try to abuse and they just ruin it for everyone

[GnarlySnarly]

i agree, fake user counts can be counterproductive, and many hosts (in particular teen rooms...) think that just listing 600 users would help get more users, this is rubbish of course and can hurt the room more than it helps, however it can be useful for a room that has recently been restarted and is normally a busy room but currently only has 3 or 4 users in, to help point out the fact that it doesn't normally just have 3 or 4 users but more...

it's one of those features that has uses, but that many people try to abuse and they just ruin it for everyone

If a room crashes, the regulars from that room know the usual count, and they understand rooms crash and start from 0 once in a while.  It may take a day or 2 for the regular parkers to straggle back and get the count up.  no need to fake it.  Faking the count would tend to perhaps attract new people exploring their options, but on joining, expecting company, wouldn't they likely feel deceived?  not a good first impression for trying to build a community.

Perhaps a good side effect is that by faking their room count, they remove themselves from being considered a legit room.  Just a quick scan of my current channel list indicates few if any have over 70 real users.  So i sort by user count and only look for the rooms with under 70.

but it can be useful for mischief i guess