Why not hide the Access List to all but those Granted Access?

[charmian]

Someone I was talking to thinks that having the Granted Access list increases a feeling of exclusion. That is, all of the people with hurt feelings that they weren't granted access. A long time ago, I asked on the ML, if we could hide our Access list.

I was answered here. The reason is because users must potentially know, if they are commenting on a locked post, who else could POTENTIALLY see the post, before they comment.

However, the person I was talking to suggested to me this idea: However, what if you could see this information (who is on the Access List) ONLY if you had already been granted Access?

In other words, that part of the profile is only visible if you already have been granted Access (in the same way that my email address or birthday can be shown only to those on my Access list?) If the only case in which someone must see the list of who has been granted Access is if they have already been granted it, why bother making that part of the profile public?

Also, I don't see a reason for showing who I have Access to on my profile. There doesn't seem to be a problem not displaying it would cause.

Comments

[petronia]

Also: there is an interesting etiquette question the Dreamweaver user body will eventually sort out for themselves, re: whether journals where most/all content is public should grant global access as a standard policy. charmian's opinion is that not granting global access should be taken to mean that all relevant content is freely available, whereas I naturally take it to mean there is locked content to which the user does not wish to grant access... Perhaps with the best of intentions it's impossible to do away with the idea of "friending policy". XD

[charmian]

"not granting global access should be taken to mean that all relevant content is freely available, whereas I naturally take it to mean there is locked content to which the user does not wish to grant access..."

LOL, are these necessarily contradictory? What is locked might be irrelevant content.

[petronia]

It's actually the same thing, but the first one is emotionally neutral wherease the second is emotionally fraught. I just think that all else equal, people will be inclined to DRAMA. XD

[charmian]

Well, the thing is, you never know what is the nature of the locked content. I mean, if people are discussing things that are none of my business on their personal filters, how have I been wronged if I'm not on them? If someone doesn't want to discuss their medical problems with me, but only with their close RL friends, I can't see how I would criticize that.

I guess if I were really paranoid I would think people are talking behind my back, but then, if they're going to do it, it doesn't make much difference whether I do it on LJ or on Gtalk.