The wisdom of Kotaku's readership is requested. What's the right thing to do regarding repeat Xbox Live friend requests?
Taking a break from news and such for a moment, I turn to you readers of Kotaku for a question of etiquette. I have recently been receiving repeated friend requests from the same people. These are gamers who I don't know and who I think don't know each other. But the pattern is the same: A user will ask me to add them. I don't reply. They ask again. And again.
I now wonder if we can decide, as a community, what the proper manners are for all friend requests.
1) If someone sends you a friend request, must you reply?
What I do: If I know the person, I usually accept. But if I don't know them, I tend to not reply, which may be an obnoxious fault on my part. I probably should tell people that I'm not accepting requests or something like that. But, instead, if I get a request from someone who I don't know, I usually just don't reply.
2) If someone sends you repeated requests, should you reply?
What I do: Some of the people who contact me are not deterred by my lack of response. They send repeated requests, sometimes more than once a day. I once blocked someone because of this, but I felt like that was obnoxious. I figure people will get the message that I'm not interested. But maybe it'd be wiser to send a polite note to the person. If so, what should it say?
If you have your own Xbox Live Etiquette questions, add them here and maybe we can come to a consensus.