LJ meta: trolls
Jan. 29th, 2004 10:32 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
cellioI gather that some people have created troll communities with provocative names and added people as members without their consent. This complaint I definitely understand, as the presumption is that you choose your communities. I would like it if being added to a community (as opposed to adding myself) generated an email challenge/response cycle, actually, like some mailing-list software does.
Some people are also upset that trolls add them as friends. They are, apparently, upset at seeing certain names on their friend-of lists. This complaint I do not understand; no one has any control over who lists you as a friend, so how could any thinking person hold it against you if someone objectionable supposedly reads your journal? I was recently added by someone I didn't recognize, and when I went to the journal to investigate I found one "this is my journal" message with about 20 comments saying "take me off your list you filthy troll". (The comments, and later the entry, have since been deleted.) Now I don't have any personal experience with this person, troll or not, and have no basis for judgement, but the reactions seem extreme to me. Besides, isn't that just what they want -- to get people worked up?
By the way,
a post in ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-community.gif){kind=small}
news today said that they are
working on breaking the "friends" notion into its
two different parts, subscriptions and access control.
I look forward to seeing how they do that. I
wonder which parts will be public (the way friends
are now). I also idly wonder about the sociological
effects when people are able to designate some of
their "friends" with "I actually read you" and others
as "I don't follow you but I trust you with my
secrets". I predict lots of angst among the high-school
contingent.
(no subject)
Date: 2004-01-29 10:43 pm (UTC)I actually do this already, through the use of what is probably too many custom friends groups. :) It is limited in taht you can't give someone access without also having to read their journal on your friends page, but the cases where one might want to do that, are, I hope, smaller than those of the other three subscription/access combinations.
Re:
Date: 2004-01-30 05:15 am (UTC)I think that that is not the case. I have a user listed as a friend, but I actually read her blog directly, so I have a custom friends filter named "Default View", which doesn't include her, and when I'm logged on, I don't see posts from her journal on my friends page. Of course, this filter has to be edited whenever you change your friends...
(no subject)
Date: 2004-01-30 05:16 am (UTC)I had one of those serial adders friend me this week. Something like 750 friends...at least she had some interesting entries.
And, after all, if people are really upset about seeing a name like that on their "friends of," there's an option to hide the entire list. Sounds simple to me. *shrug* Some people. *grin*
(no subject)
Date: 2004-01-30 05:27 am (UTC)It's about time! I've thought for a long time that the "friends" word is too emotionally charged, and means too many things. Just because I don't want someone to read my private posts doesn't mean they're not my friend. Of course, filters can do the job, but that's a real pain to manage if you want to do it correctly.
(no subject)
Date: 2004-01-30 06:48 am (UTC)Very interesting. I really do wonder how much angst and drama could have been avoided just by using different terms than "friends" and "friend of". Of course it's not guaranteed that people would calm down if they used something more neutral, but I find it absolutely bizarre the way people weight the implications of the term "friends" as far more important than what actually /happens/ when one friends/is friended.
Re:
Date: 2004-01-30 07:08 am (UTC)As
Re:
Date: 2004-01-30 07:13 am (UTC)I had one of those serial adders friend me this week. Something like 750 friends...at least she had some interesting entries.
The accused troll I was talking about has something like 360 subscriptions. I've seen no evidence that this person is actually reading those journals. On the other hand, one of my subscribers has over 400 subscriptions and comments here occasionally, so I know she's reading. I can't imagine keeping up with that many journals myself, unless some of them are very infrequent. (The only reason I can manage my current subscription list is that a bunch of them post rarely, like once every month or two.)
Re:
Date: 2004-01-30 07:14 am (UTC)Re:
Date: 2004-01-30 07:18 am (UTC)A lot, in my opinion. "Friend" was a poor choice of word; it doesn't describe the relationship, but it's emotionally loaded.
Now, though, I suspect we will get a new round of angst and drama when they make the change. That's when people will find out which of their "friends" don't really want to read what they write, and which want to read them but don't trust them with access. Of course people can do both of those now -- not read a journal and use filters to block some people -- but with an explicit split it will all become a lot more public.
Unless the idea is to continue to publish a "friends" list to the world but let the individual user flag them for reading, access, or both privately. I'm not sure that would be a good idea, though.
Re:
Date: 2004-01-30 07:37 am (UTC)Why not? Offhand I would tend to favor that approach because it gives the people greater control over content access while providing a layer of abstraction over the drama-inducing parts of the process. Doing it explicitly accomplishes the same functionality but as you observed the potential for drama when people see how people actually treat their content is much higher.
Re:
Date: 2004-01-30 07:58 am (UTC)If I were setting up this system from scratch, I would publicize the subscription list, for two reasons: I suspect people want to know who's interested enough in what they write to subscribe, and we want to make it easy for people to mine each others' subscriber lists for additional interesting reading. (I think that's how most of the connections among strangers occur on LJ -- someone reads a friend's friends' list and likes some of the journals he finds there.) I wouldn't publicize the access list at all; no good can come of it. (The owner of the journal is free to tell people which access groups they're in, if any.)
Given the current reality, I suspect you're right that continuing to publish the amalgomated list is the right thing to do, because visible change carries disruption and drama.
It should be interesting to see what happens.
(no subject)
Date: 2004-01-30 10:09 am (UTC)I know there are plenty of people that wouldn't mind me having access to their locked entries, but don't really want to deal with reading my journal. I think it'll work out well in my case. :)