Filters

[danohu]

Following a conversation with lavendersparkle yesterday, I've decided to start using more filters.


I don't currently use many filters at all. There are a couple for semi-confidential work-related things, and one to separate the Russian livejournals from the ones belonging to people I actually know. I also have a filter for frivolous memes, which consists of friends who post that kind of thing themselves.

I'm mainly adding an angst-filter so that I can post grumpy things without worrying about looking like I'm angling for hugs, and to prod me into moving more things across from my private diary.


So, there will be an angst filter. Who wants in?

[Poll #724434]

Also, has anybody come up with a way to make posts public, without having them appear on my friends' friendspages? It seems silly to inflict things like Cambridge event announcements on friends in America, but at the same time there are lj-less friends who I'd like to be able to see them.

Comments

[shortcipher]

The Entry is backdated tickybox will remove entries from all friends pages as a handy side effect (they are still visible through your journal).

[oedipamaas49.livejournal.com]

aha! Thanks, that is very very helpful. I'll have to play around with it

[http://users.livejournal.com/_catharine_/]

like who's gonna vote no to angst? this is lj ffs!

[helixaspersa.livejournal.com]

angst is fine with me . . .

[oedipamaas49.livejournal.com]

ooh, hello, nice to see you again! I hadn't realised you were still around.

Did you see my post about Somadevah's Sanskrit blog? You should definitely go have a look at it.

[lavendersparkle.livejournal.com]

You could put Cambridge event announcements behind an LJ cut so even if it appears on an American friend's freinds page it's just one line rather than half a page.

[feanelwa.livejournal.com]

With a big heading saying "Cambridge stuff"

[naranek.livejournal.com]

Have you considered recording your angst and selling it on iTunes? It seems to be quite popular :-).

[oedipamaas49.livejournal.com]

yes, now I feel as though I should come up with some dramatic woe to justify the filter. The masses might be disappointed when they realise I don't actually have much angst anyway :)

A way to make posts public, without having them appear on my friends' friendspages

[cartesiandaemon.livejournal.com]

Not offhand. I'm collecting ideas for whatever system should replace lj should be able to do, something like that (essentially, ways of specifying who would like to see this post, as opposed to can, such as "These people want to read my posts tagged 'foo', btu anyone can") is definitely on the list.

Re: A way to make posts public, without having them appear on my friends' friendspages

[oedipamaas49.livejournal.com]

Come the revolution....

And yes, that is *exactly* what I'm after; you've put it a lot more clearly than I did.

Re: A way to make posts public, without having them appear on my friends' friendspages

[cartesiandaemon.livejournal.com]

I've been practicing. That is, I had a lot of "ooh, that would be a cool feature" ideas and a lot of "and the database should be thiiiiiiiiiis general" ideas, and rephrasing them until they start meeting in the middle :)

Step #1 is have a look around and see if anywhere *does* implement many of them, step #2 is get on with my life for two months, step #3 is start writing an extensible system.

Re: A way to make posts public, without having them appear on my friends' friendspages

[oedipamaas49.livejournal.com]

the problem is step #4, which involves gathering the critical mass of several million users, allowing you to pull people away from LJ. But good luck!

Re: A way to make posts public, without having them appear on my friends' friendspages

[cartesiandaemon.livejournal.com]

One of the early design points is to make it easy for people to switch. For instance, make it easy for LJ and other system friends to read your posts, and for you to see theirs (that's easy, incorporate an aggregator, but should allow tag/person/friend-of-a-friend filtering etc). You ideally want a situation where while the full plan has everyone switching[1], it's at least a little bit better for one person. Eg. they can use LJ as easily as now, but have a more customisable and free interface with useful filter twiddles :)

[1] Though not exactly. I think it should be *distributed* so there will be many servers which people have accounts on, and can easily share posts between them. There are technical challenges, but then so are there in everything being run from LJ's servers. I realise I'm reinventing trackback, but it needs to be done :)

Re: A way to make posts public, without having them appear on my friends' friendspages

[i-am-marky.livejournal.com]

Why not just edit lj and add in some new features, as it's all open source, and then no-one has to move?

Re: A way to make posts public, without having them appear on my friends' friendspages

[cartesiandaemon.livejournal.com]

BTW, I have too many ideas that are too disjointed and many of which are implemented *somewhere* to describe everything I've thought, so what I say is bound to seem piecemeal, I'm sorry.

Why not just edit lj and add in some new features, as it's all open source, and then no-one has to move?

Starting from LJ or other open source code probably will be what you'd do. But I believe LJ is not designed for blogs on different LJ servers to work together, so you'd either have to get people to switch to your implementation of LJ, or persuade the lj company to implement many of your changes. And I would like them to, but would like a system which isn't contingent on what they think appropriate.

Re: A way to make posts public, without having them appear on my friends' friendspages

[writinghawk.livejournal.com]

The interface is in danger of becoming rather complicated if you have to have a way of deciding all that. But lj is already close, because there are tags. If you have a robust tagging policy, the only extra functionality needed is to say 'I want my FP to include Dan's posts that are marked "interesting" but not those marked "boring"' or whatever.

Has the advantage that I choose what I want to see, rather than you choosing for me. If I'm in America and I come to Cambridge for a month, I probably want to opt in to your "Cambridge" posts rather than having to have you opt me in.

Re: A way to make posts public, without having them appear on my friends' friendspages

[cartesiandaemon.livejournal.com]

Exactly.

It would be more complicated, but there's definitely demand. Lots of people have "who doesn't want to be on my foo filter" posts, if you had half a dozen buttons options for things like that, which you can ignore completely if you don't want to think about it, it should work.

In fact, you may end up with not hiding posts, but specifying how interesting they are, and then they're on your friends page either in full, or in small font, or just as subject and first line.

Re: A way to make posts public, without having them appear on my friends' friendspages

[(Anonymous)]

My point was, I think, that you don't need any extra functions at all at the writer's end. It can be done better and more simply at the reader's end.

Foo filters are for the writer to decide who is *allowed* to read the posts. Tags let them categorise them in a way that presumably correlates with who might be interested in them. It's then up to readers to decide whether they actually are interested in them.

Re: A way to make posts public, without having them appear on my friends' friendspages

[cartesiandaemon.livejournal.com]

Then the interface won't be more complicated after all :)

OTOH, I don't think it's quite as easy as that. The writer probably needs some way of saying "These are official tags you may want to filter by," (either just by posting that, or a list of such tags like the current list of filters), otherwise the reader won't know that the tag is guaranteed to be used, and not to be used on posts with nontagged stuff as well, etc.

[atreic.livejournal.com]

Ah, angst :-)

[rachelfmb.livejournal.com]

Yes. I like reading angst. I don't get why anyone could complain about it.

[steerpikelet.livejournal.com]

splease to be on the angst filter. Distract me from my own!x

[oedipamaas49.livejournal.com]

OK, you're on. I'm not posting to it very often at the moment - ranting in public followed by making the post private seems to be my current MO, although I'm not entirely sure why.

[sashagoblin.livejournal.com]

I'm actively interested in how other people deal with angst. But otoh I don't *know* you, so judgement call..

[oedipamaas49.livejournal.com]

no, you're very welcome, and I'll add you. But see comment to Laurie above (and fwiw, I don't know her either...)

[sashagoblin.livejournal.com]

:oP Strange thing, lj, isn't it...

Thanks, tho, much appreciated. And (re comment) i do that too... *sigh*