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

[flourish]

I like this idea a lot!

[charmian]

Yeah, I think it will be a lot of work to fully implement, though, because not only do you have to change the display, you've got to also eliminate the directory search part also.

Once there's a way of suggesting, I'll suggest it.

[flourish]

I think that zvi takes suggestions, but I'm not sure if that's the type she takes.

[charmian]

Having read the comm, I'm not really sure what the difference between it and the regular suggestions comm is, but I'll leave a link to this entry in the comments.

[petronia]

For the record, in case suggestions person reads this:

I'm assuming posting filters (and, separately, reading filters) will be implemented. Beyond global access granting, if one couldn't see who else was also on a posting filter to which one has access, it doesn't really resolve the initial problem. However, it isn't practicable to show who is on posting filters publically.

1) On the user-who-has-access side, it would increase the space needed to show the "I have access to" list by an order of magnitude. Workflow-wise, it's also not where I would look in order to check if someone were on the same filter as I was: I would rather scan the full list on the profile of the person who owns the filter.

2) On the user-who-created-the-filter side, publically showing the existence of a posting filter would usually defeat the purpose of the filter's existence. To take the most Disney-innocuous of examples: I have a circle of six close friends, and I create a posting filter in order to plan a surprise birthday party for one of the six. The other five are granted access. If that info were public, he/she wouldn't have to be a rocket scientist to figure out what was going on.

The most elegant solution I could come up with was to make both the existence and members list of posting filters (including global access) visible only to journals who have been granted access. The information would be placed on the profile of the person who owns the posting filter, and made part of the inbox message when someone is granted access.

[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]

I don't really think people consider not being able to see who is on posting filters the "initial problem." They only consider it a problem if the people who are on the "global access list" are not visible because of the whole "potential vs. no idea who could potentially see it" business.

So actually, no one is considering showing who is on posting filters at all.
(http://community.livejournal.com/suggestions/835142.html?style=mine The idea is widely unpopular)

[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.