Explain to me...

[hmpf]

friends list filters.

I heard of those more and more often recently. I have no desire to filter my friends list - if I didn't want to read the people on there I wouldn't have friended them - but I'd like to understand what exactly it *means*. What do these filters do? Do they filter posts according to who posted them? According to content? *puzzled*

Oh, and look what cool stuff the Frankfurt university institute of archaeology is up to while I'm gone: http://www.heppenheim.de/hessentag/steinzeitbauern/ - I'm almost sorry I'm not there!

Comments

[cathexys.livejournal.com]

no, all you do is put a number of people in a filter to

(a) make sure only a certain group gets your entry

and

(b) if you are reading to filter out folks you don't want to read.

I'm using scenario (a) to distinguish between different sets of people...I have a very personal where I'll talk about issues to people that know me in RL, a personal where I may talk about things that talk about my place of work and my hometown, a paper filter in which I work with my cowriter on our paper and have a couple of HP folks who are interested, and so on...

Some folks will use that filter to not bore folks, i.e., when you are writing heavily in two fandoms, you may want to filter some folks out for the stuff that doesn't interest them. I have a friend who has an O.C. spoiler filter where she asked if we wanted to be in but we'd be ok about being spoiled...

Now scenario (b) is the one that gets some people a little more uncomfortable...it basically means that while you have folks friended, they will not show up on your filtered reading list. I actually thought about doing that when I went friends only...I had folks who had me friended and thus apparently wanted to read my lj and by friending them I gave them reading access...but i hadn't friended them before for a multitude of reasons (primary being too many meme posts :-)...i thought about making a *reading* filter, but ended up not doing it, b/c for me lj is all about interaction and i don't friend people who don't have me friended, b/c i'm not init for their amazing posts but for the dialog.

some folks have their communities filtered out, so that they can read them separately...others have different priority filters...if there is no time, they'll only read the closest friendsfilter and so on...

and i'm sure that's more than you ever wanted to know. LOL.

Interesting...

[hmpf.livejournal.com]

>Some folks will use that filter to not bore folks, i.e., when you are writing heavily in two fandoms, you may want to filter some folks out for the stuff that doesn't interest them.

Funny - the concept is utterly alien to me. But then, I guess, you could say I'm a natural bore - I like to go on and on and on about topics that interest me without thinking about whether my 'audience' will be interested or not. Particularly on LJ - I just figure, people aren't forced to read on, they can just skip the entry if it bores them. But of course I always hope that some people might discover something new and interesting (like, e.g. "Finder") in my LJ, even if that was not what they originally came for. I wouldn't dare make the decision for them what *they* would like to read about!

>i thought about making a *reading* filter, but ended up not doing it, b/c for me lj is all about interaction and i don't friend people who don't have me friended, b/c i'm not init for their amazing posts but for the dialog.

Same here, sort of. Though I can't really claim to be here for the dialogue, since not that much dialogue is actually happening in my LJ. My LJ is just a way for me to keep a record of my life, or some parts of it, anyway, mainly for myself and a few friends who may be interested. I do like the interaction in other people's LJs, though, and in mine, too, when it happens. I just rarely have the time to actively seek it out in other people's LJs, and not many people find their way to mine, I guess. (They probably all have me filtered out. *snert*)

I am really puzzled by this whole filtering deal, though. How can people let a filter make the decisions about what *they* would like to read? Strikes me as a way of severely limiting your own experience; your own chance of discovering new things. What a depressing attitude. I admit I do not actually fully read every post on my flist every day - but I don't need a filter to choose for me which ones I will read! And even those that I don't read fully I usually scan, just to see if there's anything important in it that I should react to, like e.g. a cry for help. (It happens...)

I am usually careful about friending people, though. Many of the people on my flist are people I've known (more or less closely) in fandom for years; the others are usually people who friended me first and whom I then checked out via their LJs and decided to friend back.

>some folks have their communities filtered out, so that they can read them separately...others have different priority filters...if there is no time, they'll only read the closest friendsfilter and so on...

Well, I guess you could say I have a priority filter too - in my head. I am perfectly able to ignore unimportant or uninteresting posts without electronic help! ;-) Especially in times of stress.

>and i'm sure that's more than you ever wanted to know. LOL.

No, actually that was exactly the kind of explanation I was looking for. Thanks!

(And I feel more comfortable now, knowing that at least one person is actually reading my posts. *eg*)

Wheeee... another chance to use my shiny new Jaeger icon... I love being a fangirl... ;-)

Re: Interesting...

[cathexys.livejournal.com]

LOL...i know it's nice to know *someone* is reading...i sometimes will just pop in and say hi to folks to remind them i'm still around :-)

and yes, i usually filter mentally as well, often by author but mostly by topic...but imagine having flists with 300 or 400 folks...or imagine being ivy blossom :-) over a thousand!!! so you gotta filter...

nd i actually never use it for protection of others...i try not to spam and feel if one post a day is too much then they don't need to have me friended. as I said, personally I use it for *my* protection...for things i don't want public...even to my friendslist but only to rl friends etc.

it's a nice thing to have...and yo can do it for your fflist as well (to get that annoying person off who has every spammy lj in the world friended :-)

Re: Interesting...

[creatorschilde.livejournal.com]

I refuse to filter my posts. Like you, I figure if someone doesnt want to read my stuff, then they can either skip it, or not friend me. And I like the comments and the reply's. Its one of the main reasons why I write anything, is to get feedback. I want other peoples opinions on what I am thinking and doing. I want to know why people agree with me or not. I *like* to be challenged. but then, thats just me, and as most of my friends already know, I am just a little beyond the bizarre ;)

Okay, next question:

[hmpf.livejournal.com]

what the frell is a fflist? A Welsh friends list? *g*

Heh... now I feel bad...

[hmpf.livejournal.com]

for not replying to your posts very often. ;-) The thing is, many of the things you post, esp. faith-wise, are just a bit too far out of my comfort zone...

Re: Okay, next question:

[cathexys.livejournal.com]

OK, if you have a paid account, you can look at all your friends' friend by simply looking at

http://www.livejournal.com/users/cathexys/friendsfriends (those, of course, would be mine :-).

(since you have a free account, you don't have that option). Anyway, you can filter your fflist as well, i.e., look at whose friends you want to look at (i have one for hp and one for pop, for example).

Re: Heh... now I feel bad...

[creatorschilde.livejournal.com]

now you see, that makes me curious... out of our comfort zone? What are these things, and how are they out of that zone? *curious, confused look*

Well, religious issues...

[hmpf.livejournal.com]

in general are a tricky thing to discuss. And some things are better left alone. I have another very religious friend, she's an orthodox muslim, and there are some things we just sort of both decided not to discuss. I have lots of doubts about all things religious, and discussing those with a religious person... well, I don't think it can do a lot of good. At the worst I might 'succeed' in spreading my doubts to other people, and I wouldn't want to do that. The much more likely option, though, is that you or my muslim friend will just realize that I cannot be saved or whatever and feel very sorry for me. I'm not comfortable with either of those options. Of course, the third option is that you might convince me you are right, but I have had plenty of religious discussions with many different people and none of them has managed that, so far, so I think it's unlikely.

As I said, tricky thing to discuss.