Subscription filters: allow subscription filters to be public

[ninetydegrees]

Title:
Subscription filters: allow subscription filters to be public

Area:
reading filters

Summary:
As I've recently learned, subscription filters are private. I would like them to be accessible by everybody or by one's access list. Private would still be the default security level.

Description:
Filters can be useful to browse other people's reading page more easily and find interesting posts or new journals to subscribe to. I know I often used some people's 'customization' filters to see if there were any cool communities I missed.

Poll #1680 Subscription filters: allow subscription filters to be public

Open to: Registered Users, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 34

View Respondents

This suggestion:

View Answers

Should be implemented as-is.
19 (55.9%)

Should be implemented with changes. (please comment)
1 (2.9%)

Shouldn't be implemented.
5 (14.7%)

(I have no opinion)
9 (26.5%)

(Other: please comment)
0 (0.0%)

Comments

[yvi]

I would like the option to have them public, for sure :)

We also have an open bug for creating an S2 module with reading filter links http://bugs.dwscoalition.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1867 which only really makes sense if we can set filters to public/access.

[foxfirefey]

It might also be nice to be able to set them to a given access level.

[cesy]

Yes, the option to make a particular filter public or access would be useful, but the default should stay private.

Quick thought - can you then apply that public filter to your own reading page, or only to the page of the person who set it up? We'd want to make sure this didn't allow people to get round the restrictions on certain filter features being only for paid accounts by getting one person to set them up for a load of people.

[kyrielle]

I'd think it would only make sense for the reading page it was made for, similar to LJ's public filters.

[ninetydegrees]

What Kyrielle said.

[zarhooie]

As long as they are default by private, I can live with this, but I *really* don't like the idea.

[ninetydegrees]

Would you explain why?

Edit: you don't have to, of course. I'm just curious. :)

[zarhooie]

I'm just concerned that someone (me, in all likelihood) will accidentally make their list public. I name my lists things like "people who don't piss me off too much" and "People who I don't read but can't unsub without major drama" and so on. I know a lot of people also give their filters names like "no dad" or "everyone except $PERSON". Maybe this isn't a good reason not to like this, but.

To put it another way, I don't like it for the same reason that I don't like the delete all feature. If someone got their hands on my account, it'd be really easy for them to screw stuff up with just a few mouse clicks.

[ninetydegrees]

I must say I manage my filters in a very different way... ;) Can you imagine anything that would make accidental clicking less likely without being too bothersome either? Maybe a confirmation message similar to the one you get when you want to delete an entry.

[miang]

IAW everything zarhooie said, as I use my filters in the same way. Plus, even if I could manage not to accidentally publicize my own filters, how much would it suck to have a friend make public a "super cool people" or "good fic" filter (or whatever) and discover you're not on it? Even something as seemingly innocuous as "people I went to college with" can be problematic if you leave someone off entirely by accident and they find out...

I honestly don't mean to be all harbinger-of-doom over here, but I feel the potential for a drama explosion with this one.

[kyrielle]

Of course, I could also create drama by putting in a links-list sidebar or post of "really neat people" listing them individually. The potential's already there. What's harder is to make it easy to view all those people on one page.

And lists like "fic writers" or "writes about children" or "breastfeeding topics" or "technology information" or the like could be useful in finding specific sub-categories of people from a very diverse reading list.

[matgb]

Well, yes, but if you've got them public, how will people know they're there if you don't tell people?

On LJ, they don't appear in the dropdown on my friends page if I'm logged in as a different user, I had to put them in as links in my links list to make it effective--I know a few people read some of my filters on occasions.

Having said that, it would make sense for the navstrip drop down to show public reading filters on a reading page, so it could happen, but it's a PITA to remember to do it on LJ, I don't see it happening accidentally on DW, especially given DW is good at improving UI generally.

@OP: I really want this, I hadn't noticed it wasn't possible.

[ninetydegrees]

As Yvi reminded us, there's plan for an S2 module (respecting security level if they're implemented of course) but you might want to suggest it for the Nav Strip too.

I hadn't noticed it either! Yvi told me it wasn't when I asked about my previous suggestion actually. :)