On Thu, Jun 24, 2010 at 2:09 AM, Jason Self <[email protected]> wrote:

> Rich Hilliard <[email protected]> wrote ..
>
> > So, what is the right default
>
> Share nothing, IMO.
>

Sure.  That should probably be the default setting, but the system should
also by default make it easy and intuitive to change. The whole point of
social networking is sharing.

The way I would prefer is to, by default, create a bunch of common groups
(tags, lists, ...) which users can easily add people to. Groups like
'Family', 'Friends', 'Coworkers' and of course 'The World'. Then when
granting (or revoking) access to things, it should be easy to reference
these groups.

It would be incredibly user un-friendly if the user had to define all their
sharing groups from a blank slate, pre-creating some makes the feature
instantly visible and understandable.  It should obviously be possible to
edit, add and delete groups, but if you start with nothing pre-defined then
people won't have an easy place to start.

Share nothing by default, means your groups start empty (except for 'The
World') and nothing is shared with any groups, but when you post something
that would be one of the first questions: which group(s) should have access
to this new thing? And when you add a relationship, you will be asked which
groups that person should be a member of.

I also really think people should be encouraged by the UI to set access for
entire groups, not individuals. Pushing people towards the group abstraction
will make it much easier for them to manage permissions later on, which is
actually a critical part of protecting their privacy. If you have to
configure every person individually, then making changes later becomes a
huge amount of work - which means protecting your privacy becomes a huge
amount of work, which is exactly what we want to avoid...

Sorry if this was redundant. :-)

-- 
Bjarni R. Einarsson

http://bre.klaki.net/

Reply via email to