Friends

A friendship is mutual and is one row. You ask, they say yes, and the two of you are friends; declining or removing takes the row away, because a friendship that ended is not a fact worth keeping about either of you. Asking somebody who has already asked you is an acceptance, since two people who have asked each other have both said yes.

Presence comes from a live connection and from nothing else. Online, away and offline are read from the connections the relay is holding at that moment: never from what you have written, never from a last seen stamp. A friend who closes the application is offline the moment the connection goes.

Writing now is the row of friends in a book right now. There are three words for what a friend is at: writing for somebody in a book, idle for a connection in none, and offline for no connection. There is deliberately no word for reading, because nothing here is told what anybody opens, and a reading word would be a guess dressed as a fact.

A person card is the same shape wherever it stands. The name, the username, presence, the streak and the words this week the friend has chosen to publish, the guilds and challenges you both are in, and the actions on its foot. Figures are empty for a friend who has not turned publishing on.

Requests stand in two lists. Requests in carry Accept and Decline; requests out carry Cancel, which takes back what you sent. Declining is silent: nothing is announced to the other side.

Suggested people are the members of your own guilds and nothing cleverer. Nobody is suggested from what they read or write, and a friend of a friend is not a suggestion: that would be telling you about somebody else’s friends.

Blocking hides both directions and announces nothing. To the person blocked you are a username that is not there, which is the same answer a username nobody has ever held gets. Unblocking takes the block away and does not bring the friendship back.

Invite to collaborate sends the invitation from a book. Choose the book and the role, co-writer, editor or reader, and the invitation goes to that username. The collaboration panel of the book is where it is answered and where the roles are changed afterwards.

The activity feed is what friends have done, grouped by day: published works, achievements, tournament results, guild lines and challenges. It is a page at a time, newest first.

Try: block a friend from the overflow of their card and take the confirmation. The card leaves the friend list, the name appears under Blocked, and Unblock beside it puts the block away without restoring the friendship.