Circles and Trust

[sqbr]

One of the interesting things about Dreamwidth is that they have divided the lj "Friends" idea into two separate things: subscribing to someone's journal, and letting them read your locked posts. (Neither of which is called "friending") See my userinfo.

I'm curious to see how this plays out. Myself I'm friending subscribing to pretty anyone who subscribes to me on the assumption that reading filters will come in before it gets unwieldy, but am only giving access to people I'd be comfortable reading my most private locked posts. When/if I actually *do* a locked post I'll reconsider it.

But I would say that a lot of people are giving access to everyone they subscribe to, and possibly then using access filters. See for example denise: she is one of the founders, and uses this account for Official Announcements. She is also currently subscribing to everyone who joins dw. So she's a logical person to subscribe to (and I have) but unless all 668 people who've given her access are her close personal friends...(a roughly equal number have subscribed but not given access)

There's been some interesting discussions about it on metafandom, I'm curious to see how it all plays out:
http://giandujakiss.livejournal.com/770305.html
http://skuf.insanejournal.com/79081.html

(nb am feeling VERY TACTLESS today which is why I decided to keep myself busy with a hopefully uncontroversial subject)

Comments

[shrydar.livejournal.com]

Oops, I really should have followed your links before commenting; I was a little pressed for time, but that doesn't excuse missing that the first article was making that very point even before getting into the comment thread.

I'm with jekesta in their first comment though.

And as for the comments on the second post..

Even on an individual level--"she took away my access" doesn't have the emotional punch of "she's not my friend anymore."

..I'm not convinced. Considering how much angst I've seen in workplaces over the denial of admin rights to version control repositories, I can't see how hiding locked posts is going to be taken any more lightly.

I do mention on my own profile page that friending implies neither subscription nor access, but I gather a lot of people never bothered reading that :-/

[alias_sqbr]

Yeah, I think (some) people will still get pretty het up about it, especially when the person cutting off access writes a lot of locked posts.