jay: (Default)
jay ([personal profile] jay) wrote2009-05-04 10:38 pm

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.
plymouth: (Default)

[personal profile] plymouth 2009-05-05 07:46 am (UTC)(link)
I rather agree. The only time I could see doing a "subscribe" without an "allow" is if it was some famous person I didn't really know and didn't expect would care about reading my journal because they have 50 million subscribers and couldn't possibly read all of them.
wordweaverlynn: (Default)

[personal profile] wordweaverlynn 2009-05-05 12:41 pm (UTC)(link)
Another problem with it is that it's relatively easy to check one box and not both. Which I assume is why you've given me access but not subscribed to me.
wordweaverlynn: (Default)

[personal profile] wordweaverlynn 2009-05-06 10:01 am (UTC)(link)
That's weird. Let me post something as a test.
dangerpudding: Just Me. (Default)

[personal profile] dangerpudding 2009-05-06 07:17 am (UTC)(link)
on the one hand, sure, it seems silly. on the other, there are folks I read who never read me... and folks who I'm happy to have read my writings but, for one reason or another, I don't read theirs or don't always read theirs. At least it's obvious under this system, rather than the silence of reading filters or the default view on LJ. Never useful to believe that someone is reading everything you write in any case. :)