Operation Audacious Phoenix

This has definitely been suggested before but I can’t find those threads. I want to keep track of users I’m interested in without necessarily friending them and maybe see their news on my feed still. I imagining someone will tell me one-sided requests will do it but I consider my friends list to be a friends list!

Will either of these or something like them be implemented into 2.0? I read Kim is working out how notifications will be, if you’re reading this (hey!) maybe DeviantArt could be of some inspiration? I’m thinking of the ‘user notes’ suggestion and it reminded me that on DA there’s a button to Watch people and groups, it’s from there you can decide to actually consider them a friend or you have the option to make a new category (for example I watch a lot of photographers who aren’t my friends so I put them under ‘photo guys’).
may edit later to make more sense

For me, personally, I absolutely would not want someone I'm not friends with to see any of my notifications. That feels like a violation of privacy. For me, DeviantART is something I use to advertise my art, so of course I would want as many people to 'watch' me there as possible. RPR is much more personal and intimate to me, and I don't necessarily want the world to see what it is that I'm doing. I've had issues in the past with stalkers, and I can see something like this having a lot of potential for abuse in this kind of setting.

There are people I’m not friends with for a reason. I’d really be uncomfortable with this as a feature

I'd have to agree with Auberon and Volka, I'd rather members did not have the option to 'watch' me and my posts without having any control over who might be able to do that. I'm fine with this happening with the friends list because I have complete control over who has permission to do that and can change those permissions at any given time. I can see a lot of others having similar discomforts with this idea also.

I could really only see something like this working if it was a permission based thing first and foremost (IE: "Username wants to follow you! Let them?"); But then it's pretty much the same / similar to having a friend's list, one sided or not, so I don't think that would much make any sense to make.

Not to mention the above posts already brought the big issue(s) to the forefront.

Echoing the above. I'd only be comfortable with this if there was a 'allow this user to follow you' button, which... is essentially the same thing already in place with the friends list.

Creating another following/fave/watch system where you need to get permission and then have a specific page that tells you who you are following AND a page who tells you who is following you, would be a bit over-kill.

Considering we already currently have that exact system in place, just with the 'friends' title and a neat little page where you can see both who is friends aka following your activity, and whose activity you are following organized and easy.

I'd like to just add my agreement. I'm fine with the feature request provided there is a concent on both sides. I don't think someone should be followed without knowledge.

And, I also think there should be a choice. Some people do not mind being followed blindly, and some people want to know that only their friend's list friends have that option. So maybe there could be a "Allow anyone to follow/fave/watch me" or "Only allow friends to follow/fave/watch me" option.

So coming back to this thread I reread the OPS post and I have some guess as to maybe what might help or perhaps ideas they were suggesting that we as the community overlooked? Idk but it feels worth mentioning.

Would perhaps a way of categorizing friends in ones own friend list work for what you're after? The ability to kind of organize who your OOC friends are, Friends actively rping with, art partners etc in different pages similar to perhaps the way we search different characters on a users list through their tags (sci fi, fantasy, looking for rp, etc) this way you could kind of have your cake and eat it too. The friends list remains intact and no redundant program or one the community is uncomfortable with has to be developed and become involved and users could organize their lists into what are actual friends, and perhaps for example, people I am only following regarding photography.

To make this further clear, these organizational standards would be viewable to the user only, I'd say, to prevent hurt feelings due to "why am I only on the acquaintance list and not the BFF list" etc....it would still remain when viewing from a third party that everyone is on the same list.

I'm not sure I have a personal desire to see this implemented, but nor do I have a problem with it either. I just thought this might work for what the OP was after in their request and decided it was worth posting here....

Basically, yeah. On DA, people only know that I Watch them, those categories are entirely private to me (I forgot to mention that).

I care a lot about privacy too but I can’t help but feel this community is very sensitive to any feature that is one sided or ‘can be used for stalking’ when the chance of harassment is really low.
None of that I see can’t be solved with the block button which already stops you from friending someone or reporting but, yeah, "do not allow follow/watch" is a given (especially considering all our other granular options like disallowing under 18s from messaging us), I forgot to add it to OP out of brain fog.
I don’t see it as creating a whole other system, more like change the name of the current one and have an internal little dropdown to sort who you watch into whatever arbitrary categories. None of this has to be spread across separate pages. If a person doesn’t want to be followed with their feed on someone else’s dash I think it’s best handled as a toggle in the settings, you wouldn’t need to handle permission every time a new person tries to follow you. In fact I think it’s odd that I am given so many options if someone wants to friend me, if I don’t want them on my friends list I’d have to make it a one-sided connection which is a weird way to handle ‘friends’.

Then again I’m not a webdev and can’t hash out blueprints for how this would technically work, and maybe it’s more a matter of naming things, I’m just saying I would like a way keep tabs on players to come back to later and I’m going by DA since I use it a lot (I had Twitter and Tumblr but you can’t organise friends/mutuals), not that we should clone their system entirely.

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Atm I don’t use bookmarks as a workaround since it’s a pain organising them when my multiple browsers do it differently and they don’t sync with each other. I did keep a list on my favoured notes app but it’s literally plain text URLs that are a pain to copy and paste every time.

I don't really like the idea of the title being changed from 'friends' to something else personally, but I did remember reading all this that...

I think, not 100% positive, we are getting what Sanne suggested in another suggestion, where you can have notes on the people you are friends with/following just like you can with blocked users.

This means we could essentially make the note of each person on the list be about whether they are OOC friends, Rp partners, whether we just follow their activity for their art updates or because we like their characters.

Then you could easily do ctrl+f for the word 'OOC' or 'RP/IC' or 'art' or 'characters' and find whoever you want to and why you follow them based on the note you made for them.

I suppose just a toggle to enable/disable follows would work like personal privacy settings.

Just dropping this link in here, this is the related suggestion to be able to watch characters: https://www.rprepository.com/g/audaciousphoenix/topic/72462/

I've read all the suggestions in both topics and am still mapping out a way forward. Though to be honest, that debate is on pause in my head right now as I am FULL STEAM AHEAD for making sure we get everything we already have in for relaunch, which is coming up soooo fast.