dw_suggestions | Opt-in access filters

Entry tags:

Opt-in access filters

Title:
Opt-in access filters

Area:
privacy, circle management, filters

Summary:
Many users have opt-in access filters, allowing their readers to specify which topics interest them. Currently this tends to involve a lot of work for a journal owner in terms of transcribing results from polls or views expressed in comments. An automated system allowing people on given journal owner's access list to opt-in to filters without requiring work on the part of the J.O. would be awesome.

Description:
Journal owners will often decide that they want to filter their posts according to subject - e.g. "knitting" or "offspring" or "local happenings" or "school" or "health"-related posts - so that their readers are not exposed to posts on topics they have no interest in. Currently, this is typically managed by the journal owner asking their access list/readers to leave a comment/respond to a poll indicating what the readers would like to see. The journal owner then needs to transcribe these results onto the circle management page - which typically involves repeatedly switching between browser windows/tabs.

It would be potentially useful if some of this process could be automated to reduce the amount of work the journal owner has to do.

I envisage something like:

1. J.O. creates an access filter, and specifies that it is an opt-in filter.
2. J.O. flags to readers that these opt-in filters exist/new subscribers are informed that these opt-in filters exist as they subscribe.
3. Readers tick some boxes that indicate "if I [have been/am in future] granted access, I wish to be included in this subset of opt-in filters"
4. J.O. receives a notification that Reader X wishes to be added to filters X,Y,Z. Notification includes links "click here to allow all" and "click here to edit" (for those cases where J.O. decides they really don't fancy having their family members on their sex filter, or what have you!)
5. Profit!!!

The main problem I see with this is that it causes many, MANY more options to become available, in ways that might be intimidating - which in turn makes me think that this might be a good feature to roll out as a perk of paid accounts.

Poll #9800 Opt-in access filters

Open to: Registered Users, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 61

View Respondents

This suggestion:

View Answers

Should be implemented as-is.
29 (47.5%)

Should be implemented with changes. (please comment)
6 (9.8%)

Shouldn't be implemented.
8 (13.1%)

(I have no opinion)
15 (24.6%)

(Other: please comment)
3 (4.9%)

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

But why would people do that with access filters in the first place, which normally are private, instead of just tagging the entries comprehensively, and allowing the subscribers to in- and exclude tags in their reading filters?

Not everyone can in- and exclude tags in their reading filters - iirc, that's just for paid users.

Also, I think this would be an access filter that requires the journal owner to have already granted the users who opt-in access, if I understand the suggestion correctly.

I don't use opt-in filters at all, so it's hard for me to envision how this would work and whether people would like it! But I can see why people want them and use them.

But this suggestion says this ought to be a paid feature as well, though I guess it could be used by free if offered by paid journals? As for the access aspect, if you always access lock your kniting posts because you knit in secret and only disclose that to some, your knitting tag would also be non-public, but the people whom you granted access could see it, so I don't see a fundamental difference there.

For me it just seems counterintuitive to mix the privacy tools with sorting your content. I mean, I know people do this, but it would make creating access filters more complicated, because I would have to choose between visible and private filters.

+1

While I use opt-in filters, I'd rather do the grunt work from the polls, as it also allows me the opportunity to go in and weed out people no longer given access to my journal in the first place.

Weed out, how so? When you remove general access from someone, this automatically removes them from all access filters.

Then that's an improvement from LJ, where I still have to weed people out by hand after I've defriended over there. I admit I haven't had to do it yet on DW, so was going on the assumption that I had to do the same as over there.

... Even on LJ, I don't think that should be happening. I would recommend filing a support request over there the next time it happens.

If it happens here, at all, ever, on access filters, file a support request. I doubt it should be happening on subscription filters either, after removing someone from the reading list, although the gotcha would probably be removing someone from one but not the other, and then being surprised to find them there.

Hmm... I'll have to see if it happens again. It's a relatively rare occurrence to even happen on LJ, but I know it has in the past.

Yeah, but what if you haven't granted general access in the first place? I have one reader on a filter where she only sees posts I make that include one particular tag. I have never granted her general access, not for a minute, to anything else.

I'm assuming ariestess means people she never gave general access to, or else people she took general access away from, leaving them on tag filters which she now wishes to remove from them as well. If you can grant someone access to a single tag without granting general access, it seems you can also remove them from general access but they'll still be able to access whatever tag filters you leave open for them? I'm thinking this is what she means? Or else that I'm dealing with another delightful DW bug of some sort, at least on my end.

By "general access", I assume you mean access to any entries that are access-locked to not a particular filter?

I do not believe that it is possible (supposed to, or otherwise) to grant access to only an access filter without also including them in access to unfiltered, locked entries.

I am also confused by your mention of tags in access filters, although we may be using different terminology. The tag-based filtering that I am thinking of is only for the reading page, and is based on the other user's defined tags. Though tags on one's own entries do change their visibility based on the security level of the entries they are attached to.

When you attempt to give filtered access without general access to someone, what is the procedure you use?

Whoa whoa whoa whoa whoa. It isn't possible to put someone on an access filter without granting them access, period. If you think you have a situation like that, something is very, very, very wrong.

Oh. My strange ability to know what I'm talking about without being able to describe it to others has gone off and bit me again, I guess. :(

To answer you and azurelunatic I had to go and grant access to someone who doesn't already have it, so I picked me at emenem.dreamwidth.org. When I clicked the sidebar module to grant access to myself I was brought to another page that said:

Grant access: allow those you choose to view your protected entries and other protected content. You'll have the option to further restrict access to your entries with filters.
Subscribe: display the entries to which you have access on your Reading Page

Optional: Include in one or more access filters. You must grant access to this account by selecting the first box above in order to add them to any access filters.

beta
sophie
Online Friends

So I thought that by putting that one person I was talking about on that first ~~tag~~ (filter, yes I did screw up my wording on that, az) that meant the person was restricted to seeing stuff posted to that filter only. Am I wrong?

I need to know, though it's much too late to stop any Damage Done now, because if I was wrong, that person can read everything I've ever locked, which is Not Good.

Anyone you have granted access to can read any access-locked posts (posts with the security level of 'Access Only'). Any post made to a Custom security level can only be seen by people who are in that particular custom filter.

Custom is a subset of Access Only, but Access Only is not exclusive to Custom. If you put someone in a custom filter, they can still see Access Only posts.

So I had this all backwards. Thank you. Could someone please make it clearer for us in the future what we're doing on that page? The way you just did here, perhaps? Like in a FAQ or on that page itself? I had no idea that was how it worked and I cannot believe what I've done because of it. Yikes.

For the record, I use opt-in access filters, and I use them because I want to give people on my access list the choice to think about whether they want to see the content of my access filters (which are for topics not of general interest to everyone and also contain a lot of private content) before they actually have to see them on their reading list and realize that they don't want to read about them after all. I as the blogger also just feel more comfortable when I know for sure that I am posting for a group that is interested in reading about the topic in question.

And there's a certain amount of mental security in knowing the specific members -- one is composing for a limited, known, and known-to-be-ok audience, not whatever members of the general public are currently experiencing a bout of curiosity and decided to follow that tag through the archives (which is a known hobby of the modern infovore that can sometimes creep people out very deeply as it is also a hobby of the common stalker).

This also means that you can take into consideration the specific personal aspects of the audience -- if a friend who has a specific psychological trigger about carrots is on my writing filter, and carrots happen to become a topic in the Current Adventures of Fictional Lass, I will warn that person. This doesn't necessarily work in public entries -- that friend would probably not thank me for sharing with the whole fucking internet their thing about carrots (not a real example, btw, that I know of, which is why I picked it), and I can only be expected to juggle so much information at a time, and tracking who has which dislikes/triggers/etc. for all the people subscribed to me all of the time is just not going to happen; my brain goes "Field too large!" and gives up; also, since I am alarmingly chatty and prone to flooding people's reading lists, there's a chance that J Random Reader whose things I happen to know about is going to in fact skip this entry. With a smaller list, I can assume even if I do a general "okay, probably want to put the graphic violence under a cut and label it" I am more likely to remember that this filter contains Joanne and Mark, since it's labeled as filtered they are more likely to read it, and those two are sensitive to any and all elements of The Tango Maureen (which is not something I might normally warn for on the assumption that pretty much everyone who reads me is a grown-ass adult, but for Joanne and Mark a heads-up would be courteous if I know they're there).

whatever members of the general public are currently experiencing a bout of curiosity and decided to follow that tag through the archives (which is a known hobby of the modern infovore

Guilty. And reminds me that I keep meaning to figure out how to search Bugzilla - it niggles at my "man, this might upset other people" wires that I can see someone's public tag of $TAGTOPIC (42), but click on it and only see two actually public entries. I shouldn't be able to know that there are 40 entries I can't view.

My mental comfort works the opposite way. I don't want to have to tell people that some of their posts bother me, and when I filter via their tags it's private just for me, and nobody has to have awkward rejection conversations. This whole asking and disclosing what I read is uncomfortable.

I guess I can see differing needs, so I wouldn't necessarily mind if access filters were reformed to be optionally public, as long as the default behavior remains that nobody will ever see how I lock, and creating the normal private filters isn't made more complicated with the public options, i.e. I don't want to accidentally disclose my privacy filters by pushing the wrong button.

FWIW, I try to phrase it so that the people who express interest can express interest. Meanwhile the people who are bothered don't have to tell me about it; they just don't click the ticky-box. Also, I'm the only person who sees the answers to the poll.

I have both opt-in filters and filters that I keep privately, so I would definitely want the default to be that access filters remain private by default. I understood the suggestion to be along those lines rather than asking that all access filters become public.

My worry was more about how complicated the interface would have to become to make the access filter function in two different ways. Now you just have a simple list and only you edit it, with this suggestion it would need to become something else, possibly multi-step, and I can't quite envision how it would look in practice.

Like from what the poster describes these "opt-in" access filters would still be under the journal owner management, which I imagine as impractical and not much of an advantage in automation, with the notifications and then the owner granting the access, which to me seems pretty much the same effort as a journal owner having a sticky info post with their opt-in filters and getting a poll response notification upon which they edit the access filter. If it was really opt-in for anyone from the access list, I'd imagine someone getting a notification upon being granted access, where the subscriber then could tick off which filters they would want to opt into, and the journal owner doesn't have to do the micro-management.

The implementation that I was envisioning based on the poster's suggestion was that you would have access filters as they currently stand, but with an extra option of making them public opt-in. If that option is selected, then people granted access would be notified about the filter and have the choice of opting in, at which point they'd automatically be added to the filter. However, the journal owner could also go in later and manually edit the filter's membership.

Granted, perhaps that is not what the poster intended to suggest, but that is what I voted for. I currently have the sticky post + poll limited to access list method, and it's annoying to manually transfer poll results to the filter editing interface, so I do want an option that will automatically update the filter without my having to micromanage it. The option of being able to edit the filter afterwards is not something that I'm personally wedded to but I can see why other people would want it.

To me the step 4 in the above suggested that the journal owner would need to take action manually upon receiving each notification that indicates interest. How you describe it, it would be more convenient, but I'd like something like a warning that pops up when you click the opt-in ticky that alerts you that you are making a filter public, so that you can't click the ticky accidentally and not notice. That somehow happens to me all the time, like just yesterday I somehow managed to click the backdate ticky for an entry I posted, and didn't notice until I wondered why my own post didn't appear on my reading list.

I agree that it would defeat the purpose if one had to take action manually to confirm each opt-in. I would prefer if the notification would let you know that someone had opted in and was added to the filter, with a link to go edit if you wanted them out. But they would still remain added if you did nothing after receiving the notification.

I also agree that having to confirm that you really do want to make an access filter opt-in would be useful.

Changing my vote to "Should be implemented with changes" to make it clear what I would prefer!

skud has just made some suggestions further down in comments which I think deal with most of the concerns raised here.

This was my original idea, yes - step 4 was added in because of remembering a specific friend whose mum reads their journal, and who isn't keen on their mum being able to opt in to their sex filter...!

'course I suppose you could get recursive - "anyone on the show-my-opt-in-filters access filter gets automatically added to everything..." :-p

[sorry to everyone for not engaging more, do not have brain for most of this conversation]

But lots of people do this, so that they can say "I know a lot of you don't want to see my body image/food issues/mental health posts", for example. Which is to say that there is absolutely use case for it, even if it's not the way everybody uses filters.

Edited (Clarifying) 2012-03-08 19:14 (UTC)

But I've always thought that was a remnant from before reading filters existed. Now if someone does say regular depression posts and tags them "depression" and I don't want to see those posts I can just go to the reading filters and select that I don't want to have their posts tagged "depression" on my default reading list. The journal owner doesn't need to bother caring about my issues or keep track of reader preferences in their privacy setting, they just label their content, and the fine grained control is made possible for me.

I don't use reading filters, but I spoke to one of my friends who does and asked her about why she chooses to use reading filters instead of tags for this purpose -- specifically, talking about triggery personal issues. She said (and I'm sorry, but because of the way people use filters she said she would prefer to remain anonymous):

"For me it's largely peace of mind. While you [the general you] may be able to filter things like that, not everyone knows how. And it makes me uncomfortable to think that people might be exposed to [the filtered issues] who don't want that information about me.

I trust that if someone's willing to go to the extra effort of opting in to a filter, they won't share the information beyond community-established acceptable boundaries.

Oh, and also just the fact that not everyone DOES tag everything all the same. I'd rather have the option of someone electing to not be on the post than inadvertently triggering them."

Edited (sorry, tacos) 2012-03-08 21:14 (UTC)

I like this idea. I'm not sure about the actual implementation details as proposed by the OP, but I do like the idea. There are a few people on my circle who do have such access filters (e.g. posts about Person A's life in academia, posts about Person B's health) and they periodically have to post polls to update those filters, and I'm sure it's a pain for them to keep on flipping between the poll results and their edit-my-filters page.

There seems to be three use-cases here:

A. A new opt-in filter is added.
This requires existing readers who have access to be informed that the opt-in filter has been added, so that they can choose whether or not to opt in to it.

B. A person is newly granted access.
That person, when granted access, needs to be told what opt-in filters they can opt in to.

C. A person who already has access decides that they want to opt in to an existing opt-in filter.
That person needs to be able to see what existing opt-in filters there are for that journal, and indicate which ones they want to opt in to.

The other thing I'm not so sure about is whether or not opt-in filters should or should not be veto-able. That is, the original poster gave the example of not wanting family members to read their sex-related posts; that would be making the filter veto-able. IMHO, if it wasn't veto-able, it would probably be easier to implement. I also kind of feel that if an opt-in filter needs to be vetoed, it isn't truly opt-in.

As for the question of "why don't they just subscribe to tags?", as another poster said, there is a security in actually knowing who is reading that particular subject, which the journal owner doesn't have if they're just using tags, because anyone on their access list could be reading the post, and they don't know who is and who isn't.

They still won't know after, because you can opt in to avoid social awkwardness and then still not read. E.g. if someone had a filter posting their original poetry, and I like them and don't want to discourage them, but think poetry just sucks, I might opt in to show my support and then filter out the posts to not have to see any poems on my reading list. Maybe that seems contrived, but you just can't ever know for sure that someone read a post, unless maybe when someone comments in the post and talks about the content.

That wasn't what I meant; not the assurance that someone is reading a post -- one never has that -- but the assurance that one knows who could be reading the post.

But in case of non-filtered access locked posts you have that too, i.e. everyone whom you have given accesss could read it.

Yes, I know that. But in this case it is a smaller group of people, which is the whole point of access filters in the first place!

I guess this is the equivalent to having subscription notifications, like on some sites where people are alerted if other users subscribe to their content like on ff.net for example. I'm always ambivalent about that, because as much as I like getting the statistics that is akin to feedback from the author perspective, I'm less thrilled that my subscriptions through these systems aren't my own affair. Like for example unsubscribing suddenly becomes an issue, because you have to disclose that you don't enjoy something specific anymore.

However I can see why having that would be useful in some cases. Though I still find it a bit convoluted to mesh that content selection/reading stats functionality into the privacy tools.

I like the idea, but I would like to propose a fairly significant amendment.

1) I don't think a notification for "X created a new opt-in filter" is necessary; it's the sort of thing people probably want to post some information about when they do it, so presumably they would do so in their journal.

2) Instead, opt-in filters should be shown on a user's profile page and/or on the page you see when adding someone to your reading list.

3) When creating a filter, you should be allowed to set it to "anyone can join" or "require confirmation". The "require confirmation" option would be similar to a community whose membership requires mod approval.

Thank you, these make a lot of sense and I heartily +1 them.

Ah, okay, I like this idea and agree that it addresses most of the concerns expressed above.

+1 to all three points.

I don't actually care whether opt-in access filters are implemented or not, but apparently I have lots of opinions on how they should be implemented if they are implemented.

I wouldn't want my opt-in access filters to be shown to the general public who are viewing my profile page; the list should only be available for people to whom I have already given access. And they also shouldn't be shown to people who add me to their reading list because that's beside the point; instead they should be shown to people when I grant them access (possibly in the notification they get that tells them I have given them access).

+1 to 1 and 3. For 2, I think they should be on the profile but only visible to people who currently have access, and in the "This account granted you access" notification.

What about the names of your filters? Right now, that's all private, but if you add a section where people can see your filters, would they be able to see all the filter names you've used?

I remember something similar coming up ages ago in another discussion, and some people had filters that used swearwords or jokey insults in the names, and, IIRC, some people had blocking filters called things like Everybody Except "X", and then there were birthday filters, for setting up surprise parties and stuff...

So, I have some concerns. I would want to be able to pick which filters people could or could not see, not just for content but also for other reasons.

I don't know. I can see how some people would use this, but it seems very complex.

I don't believe the suggestion is to make all your filters public; it's to be able to choose to make individual filters public. There should be no reason to display the names of any filters that are not selected and confirmed to be public.

But given this concern, it might be a good idea to have a point in the making-a-filter-public process where it's easy to change the filters name before it's final, just in case!

1. J.O. creates an access filter, and specifies that it is an opt-in filter.

OK.

2. J.O. flags to readers that these opt-in filters exist/new subscribers are informed that these opt-in filters exist as they subscribe.

This feature should have nothing to do with who subscribes to a journal and everything to do with who is given access to it. A list of opt-in access filters should only be visible to people who have access. I do not want people who don't have access knowing that I have (for hypothetical examples) a depression filter or a sex filter.

Possibly the list of opt-in filters could be included in the notification that tells people I have granted them access, possibly it could be a separate page somewhere in circle management ("These users who have granted you access have these opt-in posting/access filters. Which do you want to be included in?").

3. Readers tick some boxes that indicate "if I [have been/am in future] granted access, I wish to be included in this subset of opt-in filters"

Ticky boxes for a list of filters, check.

4. J.O. receives a notification that Reader X wishes to be added to filters X,Y,Z. Notification includes links "click here to allow all" and "click here to edit" (for those cases where J.O. decides they really don't fancy having their family members on their sex filter, or what have you!)

If I have to do something manually, it's no better than posting polls and asking for comments. Automation is the whole point here. However, I do agree there could be 2 types, fully opt-in and moderated opt-in. Or you could just say, well, if you want to be able to veto people for this filter, don't make it automated opt-in.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

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