(I'm reading through old dw_suggestions listings.)
One of the problems with "you comment to Anna a lot; do you want to subscribe to her?" is "maybe Anna is WRONG ON THE INTERNET a lot, and I feel compelled to say something about that, but I don't want her any closer to me." Or, maybe Anna posts a fuckton of picspams with no cut tags, so I check out her journal when I've got time, and we chat nicely, but I don't want her posts cluttering my readlist.
I've got people & comms whose DW's I read through Google Reader's RSS feed because of things like that. I sometimes want to look in at them; I don't want them in my daily what's-going-on activities.
I remember using the "find users similar to you" feature at LJ, and realizing that I knew most of those people, and had specific reasons for not friending them. (Ranging from "ugh, why are the stupid people in my fandom" to "that's only a crosspost from her wordpress; she doesn't read LJ" to "we used to be close; drifted apart; zie never updates anymore anyway.")
I think experienced users don't need a "you might like to subscribe to [X]" feature; they mostly know how to pay attention to the people they interact with. And inexperienced users would just find it creepy--or would think there's some obligation to take the suggestion, and be stuck with a read/access list of people they don't like. (I know you're not saying it'd suggest giving access to anyone. But inexperienced users coming from LJ or FB may not realize that you really *don't* have to do both at once.)
I could see more use for a feature of "this person you *don't* interact with posts a lot of things with tags the same as yours; you might check out their journal." But that starts getting really complicated.
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One of the problems with "you comment to Anna a lot; do you want to subscribe to her?" is "maybe Anna is WRONG ON THE INTERNET a lot, and I feel compelled to say something about that, but I don't want her any closer to me." Or, maybe Anna posts a fuckton of picspams with no cut tags, so I check out her journal when I've got time, and we chat nicely, but I don't want her posts cluttering my readlist.
I've got people & comms whose DW's I read through Google Reader's RSS feed because of things like that. I sometimes want to look in at them; I don't want them in my daily what's-going-on activities.
I remember using the "find users similar to you" feature at LJ, and realizing that I knew most of those people, and had specific reasons for not friending them. (Ranging from "ugh, why are the stupid people in my fandom" to "that's only a crosspost from her wordpress; she doesn't read LJ" to "we used to be close; drifted apart; zie never updates anymore anyway.")
I think experienced users don't need a "you might like to subscribe to [X]" feature; they mostly know how to pay attention to the people they interact with. And inexperienced users would just find it creepy--or would think there's some obligation to take the suggestion, and be stuck with a read/access list of people they don't like. (I know you're not saying it'd suggest giving access to anyone. But inexperienced users coming from LJ or FB may not realize that you really *don't* have to do both at once.)
I could see more use for a feature of "this person you *don't* interact with posts a lot of things with tags the same as yours; you might check out their journal." But that starts getting really complicated.