For me, more of a DW bug than a feature

I'm not enamored with the split subscribe-access approach on DW... to me, this form of communication feels like a conversation between myself and those on my [friends, access, subscribe]-list. Which is inherently a dialogue. If one side or the other isn't listening, or not allowed to speak, that impairs the flow of data and ideas and leads to an imbalance between the individuals.

So if someone subscribes, but doesn't grant me access to their journal, it sounds to me like "I don't trust you enough to let you know much about my life or thoughts." Conversely, someone who grants access to me to read their journal, but doesn't subscribe to mine, seems to be saying "You aren't interesting enough to me to be worth my time reading, but I don't care if you look at my journal."

Neither of these, to me, are pleasant. Tolerable, for moderate periods of time. But I may at some point ask for either mutual communication or none, so an advantage of LJ over Dreamwidth for me is that is more or less enforces that symmetry in communications as its default, making life easier and less stressful for me. Better than periodically purging unbalanced access-subscription-paired users, with the potential there for hurt feelings.