Yes, I d appreciate it a lot. 2 organize by aspects is not as smooth in reality, I ve tried that; I can t get related to channel spamming by #tags-> does that need explanation? can relate 2 Jason's comment, I also ignore people to ensure a nice and interesting stream.

Feel free to share this proposal or reshare my post ;)

Hi, there could be a third way to do that : select for each aspect if your profile is visible or not for contacts in this aspect. That way you could easily have a "just following" aspect. And it makes possible for "users you share with but do not allow to see your profile" (i.e. users you simply follow, but have been notified that you share with them) to contact you with a personnal message which is only possible for users you share with. This later point has not been taken into account in this discussion I think.

• Adding someone to an aspect would grant them access to your profile - you are now sharing with them
• Following someone does not give access to the person - you are only following their public posts, or whatever posts they are exposing to you.

Umm, am I missing something? This is exactly what happens now, and has always been the case, in diaspora.

@loelo i thought about that, too. I think the problem is, this will get too complicated from a ui point of view. A user first would have to manage his aspects. And i think users are lazy. If i have the possibilities share and follow directly as a one- or two-click action (think of the aspect-dropdown) this will be much more straight-forward.
If the proposal is accepted, i'd also propose a "following"-entry in the left nav-bar, which will show all posts of accounts you are following.
@goob the sharing functionality has always been there. What is new, is the following-functionality.
I've written down some possible states. I hope they'll help to clarify the proposal:
a)
Bob follows Alice. Alice doesn't follow or share with Bob.
=> Bob will see all public posts of Alice in his stream.
[Alice won't see Bob's private profile, if she visits his page. I'd also propose not to mention Alice at all, that Bob is following her. However, a follower-count on Alice's profile page would be nice (like on Twitter).]
b)
Bob follows Alice. Alice follows Bob.
=> They both will see each others public posts in their stream, but can not access each others profiles.
c)
Bob follows Alice. Alice shares with Bob.
=> Bob will see Alices public posts and all posts from the aspect Alice put him in. Bob also will see Alice's profile. Alice can not see Bob's profile. Alice will see Bob's public posts in her stream.
d)
Bob shares with Alice. Alice shares with Bob.
=> Both will see each others public posts, as well as all posts from the aspects they are put in. Also, they will see each others profiles.

Maybe the solution is simply to upgrade the aspect concept. Aspects can be so much more than just a group of users, if we give the possibility to configure each of our aspects, we could say that you don't want to share your stuff with the users in this specific aspect.

We can even add more granularity later on.

Edit:
Just seen @loelo's post which is the same proposition.

@kas: I disagree, in D* when you want to see someone's posts, you simply add him/her in an aspect. If you start to add possibilities in this simple process, you'll add more complexities right at the beginning.

Also, if we don't have an aspect for the user we follow, where would be listed the followed users? We'll have to create a new kind of group for all the followed users or, worse, we'll have to check each of our users to see which of them we are just following or sharing with.

I think the possibility to configure your aspects is much more elegant. By default (when creating a new account), we could create a Followed aspect that is pre-configured to only follow people. Of course, if the aspect config can be changed (or not... it's a design choice).

Thanks for the input. I'm not 100% sure which is the best way.
I've created a quick mockup (sorry for the bad quality), which shows the way i thought of and personally would consider very convenient. Imho it would be more complex to adjust the settings for each aspect than having one more option in the dropdown. For sure, it should be clear, what happens if you follow an account. Therefore, i propose a small popup when hovering over "follow" (second pic).
Implementing this using the aspect-system probably is not a bad idea (@denschub would this be a possibility to prevent a db blow up?), but i think following should be standard and not an editable aspect. I also think sharing and following should be separated in the general diaspora environment. Diaspora was always about controlling your (social) data. Following would be an enhancement of this concept.

Thanks for the mockups, it's clearer now and actually I quite like it.

The only question that I have is: how can I see the users I'm following? And to answer that I only see an aspect. So could it be possible to have an predefined, not editable aspect called "Follow" where the users in it (and in no other aspect) won't be able to see you private profile?

:) glad you like it.
I think that should be possible.

@jhass
I've made a UX proposal above:

If the proposal is accepted, i’d also propose a “following”-entry in the left nav-bar, which will show all posts of accounts you are following.

what do you mean with duplicating aspects?

there should be an option to follow an account without sharing your profile.

I see no need for this in Diaspora. It isn't Twitter. However, I would only be happy for such a feature to implemented if a user setting was implemented enabling a user to prevent people from anonymously following their account. I wouldn't want anyone following me anonymously.

I wouldn't want anyone following me anonymously.

You can't prevent someone from following your public profile. To me this goes too deep in the private data paranoia.

You can't prevent someone from following your public profile.

No, but that's not what I'm saying. Read my post again. If someone is following my account, I want to know that that person is following my account. That's all.

Actually you can prevent someone from following your public posts, by removing them from the list of 'only sharing with me' contacts in your contact list. This proposal seems to remove that control from users.

I see no need for this in Diaspora. It isn’t Twitter.

It is a privacy enhancement and a pretty common concept in social networks, so why shouldn't this be included into diaspora?

Your public posts are always visible to everyone.
If you don't want someone to follow your posts, don't make public posts.

It is a privacy enhancement and a pretty common concept in social networks, so why shouldn't this be included into diaspora?

I always think that the policy 'everyone else does it, so we must follow them!' is a bad way to go about developing a network. Let's think first and foremost about what is best for this network, not what other ones do.

I don't see the privacy enhancement here. Currently no one knows which accounts you are 'following' except the people you are following. And the people you are following don't see your public posts unless they manually look at your profile.

If you don't want a person to see posts you make to any of your private aspects, simply put them in a separate aspect - you could even call it 'following'. If you never share anything private with that aspect, the effect would be the same as what you're proposing, as far as I can tell.

Would it work for you for a new aspect, 'following' to be included in the default aspects when a new account is created, for this purpose?

Hi, I too am not totally convinced by the follow option. I already  use an aspect "followed" for that and if a contact follow me back, I switch it to "both following" aspect. This is why I am interested in goob's point of view.
@goob : I tried «Actually you can prevent someone from following your public posts, by removing them from the list of ‘only sharing with me’ contacts in your contact list. » but I do not see where to click to do that : could you please be more specific ? thx

but I do not see where to click to do that : could you please be more specific ?

Actually it's not in the contacts page UI: click on their profile, press 'block' and then press 'unblock', and they are no longer following your posts.

If someone is following my account, I want to know that that person is following my account. That’s all.

@goob One can easily subscribe to your profile, because in fact it provides an atom-feed. I don't understand, why you want to be notified if someone is looking at things you post public on the internet.

Actually you can prevent someone from following your public posts, by removing them from the list of ‘only sharing with me’ contacts in your contact list.

I don't think that's possible. I can not remove an account, which is not in my aspects. Correct me if i'm wrong.

Would it work for you for a new aspect, 'following’ to be included in the default aspects when a new account is created, for this purpose?

Please read the comments above.

thx goob : I tried and it worked indeed ! Looks like more an hidden feature though, and even maybe an unplanned one 😏 !
I wonder if it actually makes you disappear from the aspect you were in, and if they get a notification ?

Yes, I'm sure it's unintended behaviour, but it is possible. I'd like it to continue to be possible, especially for when I attract stalkers...

yes, it's more like a bug.. because people should not be able to remove your "i share with this person" state. It's feels like other people modifying your account.

The "I have you in my aspects" -state should be totally unaffected by your block. :)

The “I have you in my aspects” -state should be totally unaffected by your block. :)

I do not agree with that : if I block someone, I would prefer that he/she does not see my public posts anymore. That makes sens to me.

That's not possible - the person can always logout and look at your profile. Your public posts are public - hence the name.

So we should not invoke false thoughts about the visibility of posts and be consistent.

the person can always logout and look at your profile. Your public posts are public - hence the name.

I did not think about that. You are right ! And yes, that was my mistake to think public post could not be visible since they are indeed public. I thought too quickly.

@cewertowski I think D* already misses a lot of features, if we start right now to limit ourselves because of performance issues, we will never be able to compete with other social networks.

I'm not saying that we have to be like FB. I'm just saying that we need to have appealing features for the users which might have a cost and we'll have to deal with it instead of rule it out.

@creak I'm with you. The question is: How much additional calculating power would be needed? Since I don't run a pod I can't estimate it. I only know that for keeping people on a website speed is important.

Maybe it is a good idea to use other concepts? Something like 'Link up' (in german 'Vernetzen') and 'Follow' (in german 'Folgen').

I agree to the second option. Friendica has both options, but the first one (different profiles) is only partly implemented and doing it right would be a huge PITA.

The second one is easy. You would "only" need to have some system generated aspect where your followers would be added automatically. if someone then starts following you, the person would be added to that aspect (that couldn't be selected when creating a post).

If you then add this person to one or more aspects, you start to follow this person. Then your profile is shared.

When adding a person you could decide if you only want to follow the person or if you want to make it bidirectional.

reference: https://github.com/diaspora/diaspora/issues/6822

Just joined D** :heart: !
Personally, I'm seriously missing a "follow" option. However it is realized, getting notified about public posts of organizations/persons/institutions that you follow is one of the greatest reasons why I use a social network.
Lacking this feature puts D* in a bad spot.
Sharing in order to get notified is not user-friendly. Nowadays everything has to be simple and intuitive. Otherwise nobody will use it.

So, even if it's only a "Follow" button that will put that person into a system-generated "Following" aspect group would already be sufficient to provide this feature (as has been suggested multiple times here). Quick and easy!

From there further options could be added to aspects like:
Aspect Family: Can see my entire profile data and all my posts
Aspect Following: Can't see anything on my profile and none of my posts (aside from public)

I agree with you and some posts above.

Example: "following" options (by default; could be checked/unchecked by the user):
[X] Contacts in this aspect can see each other (already exists)
[X] Show this aspect in my stream
[ ] Display my private profile for contacts of this aspect
[X] Allow contacts of this aspect to send me private messages
…

@timoses Amen ;)

Don't all accounts have RSS feeds?