What purpose does warning serve?

with friends like these, who needs enemies?

the idea is that if you warn someone (who deserves it) enough, they wont be able to harass any more people, at least for a short while (unless they have multiple screennames to switch back and forth to). plus, the higher the warning, the less they can say in a given amount of time, as the rate meter will decrease faster with a higher level.

as far as I know, there is supposedly a way to report misuse/abuse of warning to AIM, but i’m not sure what AIM would do, other than have a good laugh about it at their company meetings

Warnings serve a great purpose, but are unfortunately abused. Lets say you’re somebody who abuses people online. You choose a target, and start going at them. They warn you, you’re now at 35%, slowed in your rate. You take a second stab, and they warn you too, you’re now even higher, even slower. After a couple more people, you’re at 100% and using AIM on the SN is pretty much useless. Sadly, they’re used for many other things which aren’t what they were intended for.

The whole warning scheme was a nice concept, but in reality it doesn’t work well. The people who really need to be warned — the abusers and the spammers — will use multiple screennames. Warning them means nothing, because they just switch to one of their many other screennames, or generate a new one.

The problem is that the warning system doesn’t really have any teeth. No alarms go off at AOL headquarters alerting the A-Team to check out the problem with User X who has been warned to 100% (again). Or that there are 4 dozen screennames all associated to the same IP address as User X.

No, the only people who look at this information are the victims actual friends, who can only ask “who warned you?” More often than not, User X warned the victim anonymously, so the victim really isn’t 100% certain.

I think the better way to resolve the problem is by emailing a chat transcript to abuse@aim.com

If you have problems with people constantly warning you, what can you do?

First, make sure you’re not doing anything to purposely annoy people. Don’t give them a reason to warn you. This includes annoying habits like repeatedly by clicking the eye icon to pop-up sign-in/out notices. Grrrrr….

Second, if someone is hassling you by warning you without reason, block them.

Third, if they are persistent and keep warning using different screennames, change your preferences to block IMs from anyone who is not on your buddy list. This assumes that your buddy list contains friends, and not jerks who warn without reason.

Finally, you should probably have one or two extra screennames yourself. Some jerks will flood you with warnings faster than you can block them, and you’ll need another way to get connected.