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[shewhomust]

One of the tweaks by which Dreamwidth (it's late, and I just mistyped 'Creamwidth'. I'm almost tempted to keep it) improves on LiveJournal is that it has rethought the whole concept of 'friending'. The very word is discarded: here we subscribe to journals we want to read on our reading page, rather than friending their authors so that they appear on our friends page. And we grant access to people who can be trusted with the information in our locked posts. And those two groups need not be the same people, because DW separates out those two functions.

The LJ system never caused me any problems (I very rarely lock posts anyway), but the DW version pleases my logical mind.

The only thing is that we who were socialised by LiveJournal continue to behave as if the two functions were inseparable, and to subscribe and grant access as if there weren't the option of doing one without the other.

Which is very ungrateful of us.

Comments

[sovay]

(it's late, and I just mistyped 'Creamwidth'. I'm almost tempted to keep it)

I like it. The name was originally a play on "bandwidth," which makes sense when you explain it to people, but I didn't pick it up in isolation.

[shewhomust]

Yes, I've read that explanation, but would never have worked it out unaided; it equates dreaming and creativity in a way that isn't transparent to me. (Not disputing it, but it's not part of my vocabulary...)

[athenais]

I have a few people who I subscribe to but won't allow access. Because not everyone needs to know everything, even if I do write it on a public blog. All my entries are locked. I have a stalker, admittedly someone who has simmered down a lot over the past few years, but she turns up in really unexpected places (Tumblr? Why?) and so my days of open writing are done.

[shewhomust]

In other words, you use the system as it is designed to be used, because you have a reason to do so!

[lamentables]

I choose not to do the granting access thing, because it's my self-check that if I can't say it in public then I shouldn't say it at all. I'm lucky that I can take that approach & have never had issues with abuse, trolls, stalkers etc.

[shewhomust]

Mostly I feel the same: if I'm not happy to say it in public, maybe I'd better not say it. There have been rare occasions where I wanted to say something but control who could read it - but, as I posted, it's not as if I exercised any great discretion over who has access to my posts.

Must do better!

[cmcmck]

I like the 'double stage sign up.

[shewhomust]

Oh, so do I - which is why it's so silly of me not to make better use of it!

[larryhammer]

When DW first unveiled the subscribe/access paradigm, I was almost giddy -- that was the LJ enhancement I'd been wanting for YEARS.

[shewhomust]

It's so obviously a better system - I should make more use of it! Do you find it useful?

[larryhammer]

Mainly to allow more access than I subscribe to. (I rarely post access-locked posts -- and am lucky that I can do that --; if I'm not willing to say it in public, I think long and hard whether I want to post it at all.)

[cellio]

Good point. I've brought to DW a habit I developed at LJ because of their broken system, and I should re-evaluate it going forward. (Though there are those 4000 imported posts...)

The system: I never post anything that's generically "friends-locked". I use filters for everything. My most-liberal filter includes most (but not all) of the people I follow and is barely a filter at all; I've used it for things that are short-term secret like looking for advice on shopping for birthday gifts and suchlike. The real filters are much more, well, filtered.

But, all that said, I rarely post non-public entries. Anything on the internet is at risk of not staying private, after all, so best to be more moderate in what I post in the first place.

[shewhomust]

I hadn't considered filters; perhaps I should...

But mostly, like you, I reckon that if I'm not happy for people to read it, I should think twice about posting it. And I have had some unexpected responses, sometimes long after the original post, which make me valiue the fact that my posts are 'out there' for people to find.