Polls apart

[j4]

A more serious poll this time.

[Poll #183388]

Comments

[ali-in-london.livejournal.com]

Really depends on the person. For quite a lot of people, the reason a post or journal is friends only is to do with a specific person who has made a nusience of themselves, which I may or may not know about (I'm crap at keeping up with current news) so I tend not to mention a post to someone until I can check whether they are on the appropriate friends list.

I know several people (myself included) who use friends groups as sort of channels, for example ewtikins has a friends group for talking about where she's going busking on the London Underground that week and I have a group for posting up my occasional bits of creative writing and I can't imagine objecting to people being told about that. However, I do know one person who use a very careful and complex web of friends groups depending on how much they trust different people with different things, so I almost never talk about their posts with anyone, just in case.

I tend to assume that if a post is not marked "This is a custom group" in some way or other, then it's just a common-or-garden friends only post.

[sparrowsion]

I read an implicit s/friends-only/\[restricted\]/ in the last handful.

My basic attitude is much as you said in the other entry about information wanting to be free -- if you put the information up, you should expect it to spread, unless you clearly flag that it should not. I think there are sound reasons some people might want to make (some) posts friends-only or even more restricted (eg the kind of hassle-avoidance reasons I disallow anonymous comments even on public posts) but I don't think "control of information flow" is one of them. That must be left to explicit requests and the discretion of the reader.

Oh, and I use the absence of locked posts from my friends view a cue that I've been logged out....

[bjh21.livejournal.com]

I'm curious as to what people think "ASSUME NOTHING" means here? Does that mean that you ask everyone what they expect of you before you read any entry in their LJ?

[bjh21.livejournal.com]

I've just realised (as a colleague walked past my desk) that while I might be careful about who I mention restricted LJ posts to, my computers probably aren't. About 150 people have access to my office, a fair number have access to my house, my LJ password is stored on chiark (for updating purposes) and all my LJ traffic travels in cleartext over the Internet. About the only good aspect of this is that almost no-one who's in a position to abuse my LJ account will actually care about what it can see.

[daneel-olivaw.livejournal.com]

LJ is largely a public broadcast medium. If someone wants to say something privately, that's what email is for. If someone wants something they post kept quiet then the onus is on them to indicate such, and I know a number of people who do this on a regular basis. Relying on someone spotting the padlock and assuming that this means "don't tell anyone" is naive in the extreme on the part of the poster.

[j4.livejournal.com]

Really depends on the person.

Oh, definitely. I think I should have added some sort of disclaimer along the lines of "If you don't already know from other sources (real life, email, etc.) that friends-only and restricted groups are used by this person for very specific purposes".

However, I do know one person who use a very careful and complex web of friends groups depending on how much they trust different people with different things

Do they believe that it works? Does it work? Do you think it works?

[j4.livejournal.com]

I read an implicit s/friends-only/\[restricted\]/ in the last handful.

Oh, um, yeah. Sorry. That would have made more sense. :)

Oh, and I use the absence of locked posts from my friends view a cue that I've been logged out....

:)

[bopeepsheep.livejournal.com]

I kept my LJ anonymous and secret for a long time. When everyone appeared I contemplated making some posts retrospectively restricted, but ultimately didn't, mainly through laziness. All I can really go on are my criteria for restricting posts which are: some TMI stuff is restricted to my "pregnant" and/or "girls" filters. If any SO of one of those readers wished to know, I wouldn't mind the info being passed on but my guess is that it wouldn't come up. Rants will be clearly marked and anyone that should not be told about them will be mentioned in the post. Other stuff is just "I don't want the world at large reading this, but anyone who I consider a friend is welcome to know and/or discuss it with others". This is a change from previously stated policy, now I have a paid account. ;-)

There is one situation in which I would agree that telling someone I have explicitly excluded what I posted is valid and acceptable, and that is if I appear to be ill or endangering smallclanger. His needs take priority over my privacy. From this I can formulate a rule for disseminating information from other people's LJs.

[imc.livejournal.com]

Oh weird, my browser (Netscape) initialised this poll with my answers to the previous one! :-)

[ali-in-london.livejournal.com]

Do they believe that it works? Does it work? Do you think it works?

I guess it depends what you mean by 'work'. I get the impression that they are reasonably happy with using friends groups, or happy enough to post what they do post within their journal.

I know the biggest 'security breach' they've had was due to someone who was using someone elses login to get to their restricted posts.

It comes down to the old rule. If you don't want someone to see it, don't put it online.