Comments on: Proper implementation of friend groups: Request for input

By: Tim McCormack

Tim McCormack — Fri, 04 Jan 2008 03:30:30 +0000

I played around with a couple of my accounts, and I can confirm that the behavior of LJ does indeed follow the Dynamic (retroactive) model.

I'm just not sure it's a good model. :-)

By: Caesura

Caesura — Sun, 30 Dec 2007 23:32:25 +0000

Retroactive user groups are, as it has been pointed out, the default, but an option to extend group membership to someone on a non-retroactive basis would be cool.

Though that could get complicated, since the most efficient way of storing the details of the group permission might be to include a beginning and end date for each group membership on a per-friend basis. That would get even uglier if multiple, distinct timeframes were allowed for each membership for each friend (i.e. this person belongs to my Teachers group, but only for the multiple date ranges corresponding to the semesters when I was taking classes with them).

By: Tim McCormack

Tim McCormack — Tue, 18 Dec 2007 21:27:12 +0000

@Elusive (comment #1): Static and retroactive are antonyms, here. I'll have to play with my LJ accounts to see what the current behavior is, but it sounds like you are saying that permissions are *not* retroactive.

The other thing you mention, "exceptional groups", could be implemented in any of these models. The choice of model is actually irrelevant! The platform would create an unnamed ad-hoc group and post using that.

By: Tim McCormack

Tim McCormack — Tue, 18 Dec 2007 15:45:38 +0000

@Elusive: Ah, good catch on the "walled garden". I agree, it's not as good descriptor of Livejournal as it is of Facebook and MySpace.

By: Elusive

Elusive — Tue, 18 Dec 2007 04:59:41 +0000

[clicks on "walled gardens" link and reads first couple sentences]

I'll add that I disagree with the idea that Livejournal is a "walled garden," at least the way that author is talking about them. Livejournal is a public blogging site. Non-LJ users can be linked to public LJ posts, and in most cases can comment on them (anonymously). This is emphatically not the case with Facebook and MySpace. With those online communities, you need an account before you can read anyone else's stuff.

By: Elusive

Elusive — Tue, 18 Dec 2007 04:52:34 +0000

Groups should be implemented statically (retroactive permissions). This is what LJ users are used to, and keeping track of who can read what would be a mess if you keep changing group membership while keeping the same group names. However, I think it would be cool to also have an alternative functionality where in addition to having retroactive groups, you could instead chose to grant permissions on an individual basis (checkboxes for everyone on your "friends/readers" list), so that you can customize posts under extraordinary circumstances (e.g. wanting advice from the Suspect community as to what to give as a birthday present to a specific Suspect). In my vision for this implementation, there would never be a *named* group associated with these posts.