I really, really want to ask the Yarn Harlot to be on my Ravelry friends list, but I fear the silent, online snub. This is, with the dozens of social networking websites out there, apparently a growing issue. The Situationist recently featured an article about the “etiquette pitfalls” of online social networking.
With networking websites such as Facebook and MySpace expanding expedientially, the rise of cyber friendships has brought with it a new set of social niceties, conventions and potential embarrassments.
Such sites are designed to set up an online network of friends to keep in touch and to exchange gossip but, as in all social situations, the results can be fraught. How can you separate friends from mere online acquaintances? How do you tell someone that you don’t want to be their friend? What do you do when you discover that you suddenly have countless “friends” whom you either don’t know or don’t like?
(link to the complete article)
Maybe I am taking the whole friends list thing too seriously. I’ve never been on MySpace or FaceBook or any of the others, so maybe it really is about quantity not quality. Although, I think I would prefer to have a list with just a few people with whom I’ve at least exchanged emails than to have a list with hundreds of random people that I don’t even know.
I would consider it the greatest compliment to have the Harlot on my friends list and to be on hers, but I don’t want to be that person: the annoying, awkward friender on Ravelry.
Knitting Interrupted 
There’s a discussion about those on one of the Ravelry forums, b/c if you “friend” someone you get easier access to what they’re doing (stashing, working on, finishing).
There’s also talk, if it isn’t already there, of letting the recipient turn off the notification that you’ve been friended, and I think Harlot was used as an example of why that might be useful.
In a way, it’s like “friend” is a mis-nomer. I saw one feature request go up asking for the ability to annotate your friending message, so you can say “Hey I enjoy your blog and looking at your FOs” instead of there being this awkard throw back to the school play ground.
I totally feel it too, but I really like stalking FOs and queued patterns. ;)
you can be my Ravelry friend!!
It is awkward, isn’t it? I’ve decided to friend people I know and have some relationship with.
I am not friending back everyone who friends me, because there would be a lot of people on there that I don’t know very well (or at all), and that makes me feel like it defeats the purpose or helping you keep track of persons of special interest to you on Ravelry.
That said, while I might not “friend back” (I don’t really read my ravelry inbox much) I’m certainly not offended by it at all…and it does make it easier to keep someone on your ravelry radar….so friend away!
It’s supposed to be fun.