merging access filters?

[cellio]

A quick search of the help didn't answer my question, so I figured I'd ask my readers before asking DW support (sometime after Pesach, which starts tonight).

We can merge tags, i.e. delete one tag and send all its posts to another tag. I want to do the same thing with a couple access filters; I have more granularity than I need. If I just delete an access filter all its posts become private; that's not what I want. I want to take this group of posts that all have access filter X and assign them to access filter Y instead, so that I can then delete X with no negative effects.

Anybody know of a way to do that?

Comments

[denise]

Saw this go by: Nope, there's no way to do that, alas. Normally here I would send you to make a suggestion, but access filters are really old code that's baked deep into the primordial soup of the site, and I don't actually think it would be possible to implement it. (And it would definitely be the kind of thing that's high-privacy-risk, in that no matter how carefully we designed it, we'd risk somebody clicking the wrong thing and suddenly merging their PeopleWhoHateDenise filter with their PeopleWhoCanNeverKnowWeHateDenise filter, and those are the sort of changes we really hesitate over...)

Chag Sameach, by the way!

[cellio]

Oh wow, I didn't expect to get an answer from the source, and so quickly! Thank you.

There are definitely security concerns if people use it wrong. So I guess, all things considered, it's better to just change them one post at a time. I was just hoping for some sort of "I know what I'm doing and I promise not to get mad if I screw it up" option, but I can understand why you're reluctant to offer it.

Thanks, and chag sameach to you too if it applies, else happy mid-April!

[denise]

Yeah, I generally try not to barge into people's journals to be Helpful at them very often, because it can come across a little bit as Big Sister Is Watching You, but there's been so much excitement this week that I'm just trying to be as helpful as possible whenever I see people asking questions and figure that people will understand that this week is a bit of a special case. :)

The "happy mid-April" is probably most accurate. I'm sort of along the lines of "raised Catholic, ran far away as a teenager, have studied a bunch of religions, would probably pick Judaism if forced at gunpoint to choose one of them, but am too lazy to actually convert or even to ever bother to attend services", heh, so I don't want to claim well wishes that don't technically apply...

[cellio]

You're welcome to barge in here any time. If I didn't want people to be able to comment I'd restrict commenting, and if I didn't want people to see my posts I'd restrict viewing. You did give us the tools to do that, after all. :-)

I'm happy to see all the new activity on DW. I'm seeing a lot of people lending helping hands to the newcomers, which is great.

As for well-wishes, I'm flexible! If Judaism resonates with you then cool; if it resonates enough you can learn more about it in lots of places. If it never goes beyond idle curiosity, also cool. Unlike some other religions, we don't proselytize.

[denise]

That's one of the reasons I love Judaism so much! Aside from the bits of the theology that really speak to me, I mean. I love how practical and pragmatic it is. (And how pretty much every commandment has an invisible asterisk next to it leading to a universal footnote of "* unless doing that would harm yourself or others, in which case, don't".)

And yeah, I'm loving the energy that's going around this week. I mean, DW has always been full of activity if you knew where to look, but this really does feel more like a giant moving-in party! I was joking in dw_maintenance and on Twitter this morning about throwing a block party once the movers finish up with everyone's stuff, but we should totally throw a block party to show off to everyone why DW users are the best userbase a social site could ask for...