Tidy up the Edit Profile page

[swaldman]

Title:
Tidy up the Edit Profile page

Area:
Edit Profile

Summary:
The Edit Profile page needs a tidy, especially when it comes to controlling who can see what.

Description:
I think that the Edit Profile page is needlessly confusing at present, especially for those not used to LJ-a-likes.
I think it could do with general thinking-through and cleaning up, but here are some specific things that I've noted. Let me know if I should resubmit them as separate suggestions.

* When I want to control who can see which bits on my profile, some things are set here and some are set over in Account Settings -> Privacy (under Contact Info Security and DW Private Messages). Some things are set in Account Settings but then overridden in Edit Profile! I don't know whether this is pure historical legacy, or whether it's because the stuff that's in Account Settings applies more widely than just the profile, but I think it's confusing.

* I can't exercise any control over who can see website URLs that I enter. This is already covered by another suggestion (http://dw-suggestions.dreamwidth.org/404239.html), I'm just mentioning it here for completeness.

* There is a line that reads "DW Private Messages: OBSOLETE: This option has been moved to Account Settings". Why is this here at all?

* There is no granular control over who can see IM usernames. The access level for all contact info (email, Yahoo, Etsy, Gtalk, Jabber, Skype, Twitter, etc etc etc) is set in Account Settings. I think it would be good to be able to control the visibility of each contact method individually.


None of this is important or urgent, but I think giving this page a clean-up at some stage would be a Good Thing :-)

Poll #11118 Tidy up the Edit Profile page

Open to: Registered Users, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 46

View Respondents

This suggestion:

View Answers

Should be implemented as-is.
13 (28.3%)

Should be implemented with changes. (please comment)
2 (4.3%)

Shouldn't be implemented.
7 (15.2%)

(I have no opinion)
22 (47.8%)

(Other: please comment)
2 (4.3%)

Comments

[mokie]

I can think of one!

Say a person's DW account and MSN account are under pseudonyms, because this is the Internet and we love our delusions of anonymity. But for work reasons, his AIM account uses his real name.

Sure, he could make an AIM account for non-work things in the event that, at some point, someone from his access list wanted to contact him. And he'd need to use an IM program that let him access multiple AIM accounts at once from that point on.

But it'd be less hassle if he could simply go down his chat service list and specify public/private individually, so anything announcing his real name was access-list only.