Using 'Friend' Custom Lists for Privacy

  • gs
    • 857 posts
    July 12, 2017 2:20 PM EDT

    A summary of the feature request.  'Friends' is too limiting for use in Privacy Settings, so I'm requesting to use Custom 'Contact' Lists.


    Details of settings, steps to use or see this feature, benefits.  Many Social Networks/Communities using SE are using them for more than just 'friends'.  For example, when sharing content (Activity Feed, Photos, Videos, etc.) a User should be able to control who has access to it, and existing settings don't provide enough IMHO.  Imagine being able to group (not using groups) your friends, family, colleagues (oops - misspelled in screenshot), baseball team members, church friends, etc. into different 'buckets' so that when you create content, you may multi-select which of these groups of people you wish to share this with. As far as steps to use, basically anywhere Privacy setting is allowed, these additional Custom Friend Lists should be available.  Where/how they are created is entirely up to SE, but a suggestion would be a link on the Users Home Page.

    Add screenshots when possible.

    This FR pertains only to the Custom List portion of the screenshot below, so please disregard the other 2 areas.

    Any other information you want to share that is relevant to the feature being requested. This might include the lines of code that you have identified as needing improvements and potential solutions (and your opinions on their merits).  Once this is incorporated into SE Core, then 3rd-Party Devs may build it into their Plugins. 

    Looking forward to other ideas/suggestions from you

    • 629 posts
    July 14, 2017 7:31 PM EDT
    gs said:

    A summary of the feature request.  'Friends' is too limiting for use in Privacy Settings, so I'm requesting to use Custom 'Contact' Lists.


    Details of settings, steps to use or see this feature, benefits.  Many Social Networks/Communities using SE are using them for more than just 'friends'.  For example, when sharing content (Activity Feed, Photos, Videos, etc.) a User should be able to control who has access to it, and existing settings don't provide enough IMHO.  Imagine being able to group (not using groups) your friends, family, colleagues (oops - misspelled in screenshot), baseball team members, church friends, etc. into different 'buckets' so that when you create content, you may multi-select which of these groups of people you wish to share this with. As far as steps to use, basically anywhere Privacy setting is allowed, these additional Custom Friend Lists should be available.  Where/how they are created is entirely up to SE, but a suggestion would be a link on the Users Home Page.

    Add screenshots when possible.

    This FR pertains only to the Custom List portion of the screenshot below, so please disregard the other 2 areas.

    Any other information you want to share that is relevant to the feature being requested. This might include the lines of code that you have identified as needing improvements and potential solutions (and your opinions on their merits).  Once this is incorporated into SE Core, then 3rd-Party Devs may build it into their Plugins. 

    Looking forward to other ideas/suggestions from you

     

    Hi GS. Have you tried renaming friends to contacts in the language editor?

    Another unique idea you can try, is renaming groups to friends. This way people who are friends have their own place to share private updates. Or renaming groups to profiles allows people to achieve something similar to contact lists. You'd just have to post in each group separately if you wanted more than one group to carry the same content.

    It's probably not ideal but it might work in terms of adding the information to the database.

  • gs
    • 857 posts
    July 14, 2017 8:37 PM EDT

    renaming friends 2 somethg else like contacts is just one tiny piece.  no matter the word used, it shd allow creation of separate lists of 'them'.

    renaming groups to friends convolutes the existing purpose of groups.

    its interestg what u mentioned about groups bc i was going 2 premptively explain y i think that may not work well, but didnt bc thats paragraphs of text.  i think its btr 2 leave alone what works and incorporate optional new functionality where useful.  much easier imho 2 post things like we do now and have them appear how/where they do now, but let privacy determine who can actually c it.

    • 629 posts
    July 14, 2017 8:45 PM EDT
    gs said:

    renaming friends 2 somethg else like contacts is just one tiny piece.  no matter the word used, it shd allow creation of separate lists of 'them'.

    renaming groups to friends convolutes the existing purpose of groups.

    its interestg what u mentioned about groups bc i was going 2 premptively explain y i think that may not work well, but didnt bc thats paragraphs of text.  i think its btr 2 leave alone what works and incorporate optional new functionality where useful.  much easier imho 2 post things like we do now and have them appear how/where they do now, but let privacy determine who can actually c it.

     

    I agree with you. I only thought it would be a quick fix we could achieve right now but because there's no multiple instances of modules it wouldn't work. I wish I could provide better options.

    I wish for this to happen. I thought we already had custom friends lists. That's why I suggested renaming friends to contacts. That way it would work well. The problem is there's no custom display of friends that I know of other than on profile pages, which isn't really ideal as far as widgets are concerned. I hope to have this be improved in another version.

    Perhaps just having multiple friends list functionality wise as instances would make it possible. For example, the followers and following lists. Customizing those may be something to consider.

  • gs
    • 857 posts
    July 14, 2017 8:53 PM EDT

    ==>"I thought we already had custom friends lists."

    i thk we might but they dont seem 2 b used for anythg useful.  for ex, the SEAO adv act feed/wall i use allows some functionality with custom lists created in that plugin but only for the activity feed. but it doesnt control privacy, only helping u quickly filter what u c.  thats great but not enough.

    • 629 posts
    July 14, 2017 9:54 PM EDT
    gs said:

    ==>"I thought we already had custom friends lists."

    i thk we might but they dont seem 2 b used for anythg useful.  for ex, the SEAO adv act feed/wall i use allows some functionality with custom lists created in that plugin but only for the activity feed. but it doesnt control privacy, only helping u quickly filter what u c.  thats great but not enough.

     

    There is a plugin I know of called user access manager. This may help for custom lists. But I don't know if it does automatic detection of them though.

  • gs
    • 857 posts
    July 14, 2017 11:11 PM EDT

    i have webhive's access mgr which helps control access by page, but im not familiar w user access mgr (mb theyre the same thg?)


    This post was edited by gs at July 14, 2017 11:20 PM EDT
    • 629 posts
    July 14, 2017 11:23 PM EDT
    gs said:

    i have webhive's access mgr which helps control access by page, but im not familiar w user access mgr (mb theyre the same thg?)

     

    I think it may be something like that. I seen it some time ago.