Friends List Policy

[gusl]

Don't ask my permission to add me. Adding me amounts to (A) giving me permissions (B) adding to your browsing convenience. It couldn't possibly bother me.

The (A) property above is meaningful to the system at a deep level, unlike (B) (one of my complaints with LiveJournal is mixing up those distinct concepts). So, if I'm no longer interested in somebody's journal, I take them off my LJ50 friends group. This does not mean I don't want them to read my friends-only posts. If that were the case, I would take them out of my friends list.

If it were to happen I want to read somebody's journal, but don't want them to read my friends-only posts, I would create a "privacy" group to use for those posts. Basically, I would no longer use a "friends list", but instead a "reading list" and a "trusted reader list".

Comments

[evan.livejournal.com]

We've discussed fixing this a number of times, but it's really hard to do without confusing the users.

[spoonless.livejournal.com]

That's a really good point. I'd like these two to be separated too. I think what they ought to do is add a check box for one or the other while you're adding them. Or let you define privacy groups [I'm still somewhat new to the lj community, I'm assuming they don't have this feature].

Re:

[gustavolacerda.livejournal.com]

Actually, you do have check boxes if you're using friends groups. You can create a group called "reading" and a group called "trusted readers", and do exactly as you wish.

[spoonless.livejournal.com]

Hmmm... do you need a paid account to have groups? I have been looking through options and I don't see anything about that.

Re:

[gustavolacerda.livejournal.com]

Any account can do it. Try the FAQ.

[fjarlq.livejournal.com]

Hmm... I'm having trouble seeing how confusion would come up. Let users have separate lists (I'd call them "journals I read" and "users I trust") if they want. If they don't want it, let them keep the single friends list, but make it clear that the list means two different things. Couldn't it be an option like the other checkboxes in the user profile?

[evan.livejournal.com]

You overestimate the common man. :)

For example, I'm on a bunch of people's friends lists because my username is "evan" and they have friends named "Evan".

"users I trust" is ok, but at the same time I don't really trust a lot of the people I allow to see my friends-only entries. (For example, if there was some higher level of trust that became available later, like, say, maintaining the communities I run while I'm away, I wouldn't a generic list of "people I trust" would become doubly confusing.)

So it could be "people I allow to see my friends-only entries", but that's too long and goes back to "friends" again.

Basically, once the friends list is done away with, it's difficult to pin down exactly what the "trust" list should be at all. Right now, it's basically the union of all sets of people I want to be able to have in custom security groups, which is incredibly confusing when you look at it from that perspective.

[chronicfreetime.livejournal.com]

I wish there was a more direct implementation of B. Like a page where I can just drop in a list of account names and read them as if they were my friends list.

[easwaran.livejournal.com]

I agree; it would make things a lot simpler to make those concepts more clearly separate. Although the "trusted reader list" would obviously have subcategories. The "reading list" doesn't obviously seem to have any reason for being split up, but that would make sense too.

However, since one's friends list is public, it's somewhat nice to keep it secret which of the two reasons someone is in there for. You might want some people not to realize that they're not in the "trusted reader" category, even (perhaps especially) if they are close personal friends.

BTW, I'm still trying to decide whether or not to add you to my friends list. But it's good that I can see you in my "friend-of" list, so I won't lose the link.

Re:

[gustavolacerda.livejournal.com]

and would you add me for the sake of your reading or your writing? or is that secret?

[gustavolacerda.livejournal.com]

Can you suggest a style which will remind non-LJ readers to sign their comments?