musings on flists

[julesjones]

Looking for advice/suggestions:

I've always had a policy on this LJ that I was not locking posts here and I was not friending people unless it was an LJ I would read regularly--and that I would think long and hard about whether I really want to add more to my read regularly list. In effect I use this LJ as the "read regularly" filter and what is now the fanfic LJ as the "friend everyone back but don't always read" filter. There are two reasons for this:

One is that when my RSI is bad, all that scrolling through stuff hurts. I mean that literally. Even when my RSI isn't bad, all that scrolling is one of the things that could make it bad.

The other reason is that LJ is an enormous time sink. Even if I didn't have to worry about protecting my wrists, I'd have to worry about protecting my time. Time spent reading LJ is time not spent writing the next book (or reading other people's books), and there are a great many LJs out there that are fun or useful or offer good reasons for me to want to read them. Yes, I know you can have filters, but I'd have to be absolutely ruthless about using them.

Goings-on in a writer friend's unofficial blog on LJ have led to him re-assessing his friending/friends-locked policy. He's also been using a "first reader" filter so that he can use his LJ as a means of circulating drafts to his critique group in a manner that allows us all to see each others' comments. That's been making me think about whether I should look again at how I handle friending. In particular, there has been mention of the facility to set one of your filters so that it automatically shows as the default view. In other words, I could set up a filter that includes the people currently friended, and when I log into LJ that is the view that shows up when I click on the "Friends" link. I wouldn't have to explicitly set that filter. That would probably be enough to deal with the twin problems of distraction and self-inflicted pain; and it would make it easy for me to set up a critique group filter, and to put friends on that filter even if they're not on my core LJ reading list.

What's worrying me slightly is that in some areas of the LJ sub-culture, there is very much an attitude that if you friend someone, you are obliged to read that LJ. It could be exacerbated for me because I don't f-lock on this LJ, and doubt I'll f-lock in the future other than for special purposes like a critique group, so there isn't even the excuse of friending someone because they'd like to read my f-locked posts. Any thoughts on whether I'm going to be causing trouble for myself by putting people on my flist so that I can find them when I do have time every so often to read more than the core group?

Comments

[niobedancing.livejournal.com]

I really think it depends on the individuals involved. I think that if you put in your user info a statement about your friending policy that will take care of 99% of potential problems. Just say exactly what you intend to do - like if you friend me I will friend you back so I know where to find you, but I don't always have time to read everyone's posts.

I've friended several journals that are read by masses - these people have hundreds of friends. Most of them have something like that on the userinfo saying look, I will friend you back since you are interested in me, but I can't possibly have time to read all these journals regularly so please don't take it personally.

Good luck!

[julesjones]

Yep - I've got a couple of those on my flist. I think if I had a bigger "friend of" list I wouldn't be so twitchy about it, because people really do have to be clueless to think that someone with 500 LJ is going to read all of them. Someone with a hundred or so, on the other hand... Though I'm not going to be friending everyone back if I go down this road.

[tharain.livejournal.com]

I have a large (for me) and growing F-List, and there is no way I can read all of the entries without spending all day on lJ (oh wait, I do...). I read the ones that interest me this day, and skim read the rest.

There are several people I have F-Listed who do not have me back. These are mostly writing type folks who write stuff that I am interested in, and on which I occasionally post. I am fine with this; I am interested in what they have to say, and realize their reading list is huge.

My feeling is, if people F-List you, you're under no obligation to FList back, unless you're interested. And if you do list 'em, you don't have to read them.

As to finding and reading their stuff when you have time, go through the "people who have friended you" list every now and again, when you want some random LJ reading. You might find someone interesting. At the very least, it'll kill a few hours in a relatively entertaining fashion.

Hmmm. Did this make any sense?

[julesjones]

One of the things that started me thinking about this was noticing several new names on my "Friend of" list a couple of weeks ago, looking at their LJs, and thinking "Damn, I don't have room for any more on the reading list, but I want to read these people when I do have time, and I might lose track of them if they unfriend me." You were one of them. :-)

My current f-list is already at what I can handle on a daily basis, even with skimming. Another factor in thinking about changing the way I handle it is that there are a couple of feeds I have because they're useful to me and other people, and it's a handy way to bookmark them - but most of the time I don't need them in my default view, because I usually read them directly at the originating site. (Miss Snark, for one.)

[tharain.livejournal.com]

::grins::

thank you. I've been enjoying your posts, believe me.

(Miss Snark, for one.)

::"oooooo"s reverently::

Miss Snark. She's a wonder, she is.

[green-knight.livejournal.com]

I've just been friended by a spammer (an account that creates random text) which seems to have friended people completely at random.
What surprised me (I tried to find out whether the people targetted had anything in common) was the amount of people who would friend back this mass of writhing gibberish.

I'm populating the friendslist of beyond_elechan with writerly journals I like to read from time to time, and should really do the same with regards to photoblogs and paintedknight

[julesjones]

[Bad username or site: beyond elechan @ livejournal.com] is one of the ones I'd promptly add to the "not daily but useful" filter, in part for *its* flist. You've done a nice job collecting useful stuff there.

[gauroth.livejournal.com]

I really enjoy reading your Lj, but I would never, ever expect you to friend me back. It's your LJ, you should be allowed to do what you like with it, and anyone who says otherwise is an uter wet and a weed.

[julesjones]

"My LJ, my rules" is my basic attitude, but this is my Official Writer Blog, so I need to give some consideration to not pissing people off unnecessarily. And Brad naming the damn things "Friends" and "Friend of" when he first started the whole shebang has caused all sorts of interesting psychological effects.

[goes to amazon to add Molesworth to wants list as reminder]

[brooksmoses]

My opinion on much of the various bits of LJ culture surrounding friendslists derives from a couple of sources. One of them is the LJ demographics curve: Teenage politics are to be expected in bulk LJ culture, but that's not my friendslist even if it does spill over occasionally. The other is something that an anonymous critiquer noted in james_nicoll's journal (while, of course, completely missing the point, as anonymous critiquers are wont to do): I write this for me, not for an audience. (Well, not really, but something close to that.) My audience are people who've self-selected on basis of wanting to read it, and that's their responsibility rather than mine.

Thus, my conclusion is that my friendslist is there for my convenience, and if people have a problem with it, tough potatoes. (Again, not really true, but if people make drama out of it, I'll treat that just like any other making of drama out of something not their business. And I'll listen to reasonable polite requests.) In practice, this has worked fine. There are maybe five people out of four dozen who've friended me that I haven't friended back. I don't read the journals of all of the people on my list, even though my default view isn't set to a filtered version. Nobody's complained yet.

[julesjones]

Hee. I'd missed that uproar in James's LJ, because what with the headache I'd been skipping comments on most LJs over the weekend even when I was reading the entries.

Part of the problem for me is that while this LJ has ended up being to a large extent an ongoing conversation with other rasfc folk and a few of my other writerly friends from elsewhere, it is my Official Author's Blog. Getting feedback on other people's experiences is useful -- thanks.

[jhall1.livejournal.com]

Any thoughts on whether I'm going to be causing trouble for myself by putting people on my flist so that I can find them when I do have time every so often to read more than the core group?

It wouldn't be a problem for me, but obviously I can't speak for other people. But surely in most cases people won't be able to tell whether you are reading their journals or not?

[julesjones]

If I set it up as only the stuff I actually read every day comes up on my default display filter, then anyone who looks at my "friends" display can work out who is and isn't on it (for LJs with frequent public posts). If they're *that* anal there's not a lot I can do about it. :-) But there are two sides to the problem, and it's the other one that in some ways concerns me more. Some people assume that anyone who has them friended reads their LJ -- and then act on that assumption, including getting very snotty about you not knowing about something they've mentioned there. I've only had mild brushes with this sort of thing, but a couple of my friends have had major problems with it.

[nycshelly.livejournal.com]

I enjoy reading your LJ. I don't care if folks friend me back, nor do I feel the need to friend someone who has friended me if I don't want to read their LJ. I think I've only friends locked one post, ever, and there was a specific reason for that. I figure I'm in the minority about this, but IMO, folks should read/friend the LJs they want and not worry about it. Too many folks are just too sensitive about these things.

[kalypso-v.livejournal.com]

I don't have everyone on my default filter. The beauty of filters is that no one else can see who's on which, so the only difficulty is if someone does expect you to know about the life-changing event they've written about at length.