On Jan 12, 2009, at 11:45 PM, Nora Bombay wrote:

> Regarding : WTF
>
> On Mon, Jan 12, 2009 at 10:11 PM, Denise Paolucci  
> <[email protected]> wrote:
> In other words, it's as-closely replicating the behavior of LJ's
> visibility model as is possible with the change to the system. You'll
> know who possibly *could* be reading the friend's post that you're
> reading, but you won't know for sure if it's filtered to a more
> restrictive subset or not unless the user chooses to disclose this  
> fact.
>
> I want to express my support for this feature. I use my "friends"  
> list both for communication with my friends, and for tracking my  
> enemies- call it my "conflict of interest" filter- there are a  
> handful of people on LJ with whom I have had spectacular real life  
> blowouts. And being able to tell if somebody has this person(S)  
> 'friended'  makes a lot of posts involving my actual life much easier.

Yes, exactly. We want the balance between allowing a user to define  
things to their taste (and with the privacy levels they choose), and  
allowing a reader/commenter to have a reasonable expectation that  
they know Who's Listening. So, we compromise: we tell the reader/ 
commenter all of the people who are *possibly* listening (ie,  
everyone User X trusts), but not who *exactly* is listening (ie, who  
is on the specific filter User X is using, or even that User X is  
using a filter at all). That introduces a level of uncertainty into  
each individual entry (unless User X chooses to elucidate), but it  
also lets the reader have a rough idea of the largest possible number  
of people (and the identity of that pool of people) who might  
*possibly* be able to see the post.

For instance, I have a filter for my draft writing -- it's got 10  
people on it. Every time I edit the filter to add someone else, I  
leave a note on the next post to the filter indicating that someone  
new is on it, so everyone who's on the filter knows who-all else is  
reading, and I tag each post to that filter with the [draft] tag; I  
don't mind having that filter's existance or its composition known.   
I might have another filter named "people I only half trust";  
obviously, I wouldn't want that filter's existance or its composition  
known. So, I'd get to choose to set the draft filter to members-can- 
see, but not the other one.

These are all things we are thinking about while we are designing the  
system, and while many of the additional functionality enhancements  
might not make it into production by the time we hit beta, we *are*  
carefully evaluating how the functionality should behave as we  
migrate "friend" into "watch" vs "trust" with a careful eye towards  
social dynamics. This is why having a sociologist -- even an amateur  
one such as myself -- on staff is so important. :)

--D


-- 
Denise Paolucci
[email protected]
Dreamwidth Studios: Open Source, open expression, open operations.  
Coming soon!

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