Members who also wanna "Friends" vs. Real World Friend distinction

How about ‘connections’

I distinguish between the two fairly easily.  Friends are those I bare my soul to, everyone else I know are acquaintances (connections, contacts).

what about using a version of soulmates? soul brothers and sisters, fathers and mothers?

Friends…

..people we exhibit friendly behavior towards…people we trust…people we know..people we don't know.

I suppose a shared history is the real distinction, for me, I can be friendly with anybody, I hope, but usually I like to spend time with people I've already spent time with.

There are Friends and there are Acquaintances and the difference is well defined.

I think that this idea could lead many to think that they aren't appreciated if they aren't on someone's “True Friends” list. Ultimately it could complicated relationships, make many wonder why they aren't in the high-rankings, and possibly perturbed someone. If this idea should take effect, I think it would be best for only the user to see his list of friends in that way. Make sense? 

When I saw this idea I hurried and click, but now that I am thinking it over, I am hesitating voting…

not so much because I am worried about offending anyone (I am tired of rules and systems limiting themselves for this reason, you only end up catering to the “weak”, confining everything to make sure not to overlap or step on each other in anyway),

but I do think it will complicate relationships….because as much as, yes it would be nice to be able to make the difference between who I know in the “real” world, and who is a cyber friend, I've also had a stronger connection with people I've met online (who I have yet to meet in “real” life) than some acquaintances that I share my concrete earthly life with….so then it becomes really hard, you end up having to make more categories, and it just ends up being so intricate…it's just useless.

Examples of other sites who have categorized “friends” are myspace…where you actually rank your friends (and then people began messing with the coding to have more ranks, or no ranks, etc, creates lots of melodramatic scenes and movements, considering the maturity of a lot of myspace users) or couchsurfing, the connections there are categorized but it's for refferals, which is pertinent to the purpose of the site,

so I don't really think it's that great of an idea, unless you give people the chance to create groups within their friends, and they get to decide the title of those groups themselves….custom-made grouping is really probably the best option if we are to add such a feature…you know kind of like phone book style….

I agree with friends and acquaintances for the categories, because “real” friend sounds odd, but yes, the distinction needs to be made. Or add an “IRL” sub-heading or something.

I don't need to post a list of people I feel close to (or not) on this site, anymore than I would consider slapping a colour-coded rank sticker onto the forehead of someone I know in 3-D. If someone is close to me, we both know it, whether we've met in-the-flesh or not. Everyone I meet is a 'real person,' regardless of how we come together. And although my interaction with someone may be brief or recent, that doesn't make it less valuable to me. 

If the ability to rank your Gaia friends were  offered, I would want to be able to opt out of that system. I believe it would send a message I have no wish to send to the people I meet here, and to others who observe its use.