elusiveat

One of the shifts in internet culture that has occurred over the past ten to fifteen years is the degree to which people are willing to make their ideas public. This is notable on Dreamwidth, where a lot of accounts are locked down entirely, and it can be hard to make new connections (certainly harder than it used to be on Livejournal).

An idea I've heard kicked around as a possible middle ground for privacy would be to allow a privacy level that was visible to people trusted by the people you trust, or possibly separated by more degrees of separation, something you might call a "friends-of-friends" access level (though the "friends" nomenclature presents problems of its own). I believe this exact setting exists (or existed) on Facebook, but with the number and (number of different types) of people I had on *my* Facebook friends list, I regarded that option as essentially meaningless, so never used it.

The situation might be different on Dreamwidth or similar platforms.

What do you think?



Discuss.

To do:
1) Create a public-persona username on dreamwidth. Done: http://myfirstname-mylastname.dreamwidth.org
2) Create LJ syndication of public-persona dreamwidth blog. Done: http://syndicated.livejournal.com/myfirstname-mylastname/
3) Make elusiveat.dreamwidth and elusiveat.livejournal into friendslist/accesslist-only accounts. Revision: Leaving posts relevant to LJ -> DW switch unlocked.
4) Cross-post recent public journal posts to new public account.
5) Publicize new account via Facebook.
6) Post future public posts to new account ONLY. Continue to post personal (locked) stuff to elusiveat accounts.

Please comment if you have any thoughts, concerns, or input. If all goes well, I will probably be using elusiveat as a dry-run for potential public posts, and will be soliciting feedback on specific posts at that time.

It's actually very easy to get logged onto Dreamwidth using OpenID. (Although as Squirrelitude notes there are apparently some bugs regarding RSS subscriptions through OpenID.

The following steps are actually rather self-explanatory after you get past step 2, but I included all of them just in case.

Here's what you do:
1) Go to http://www.dreamwidth.org/update
2) Click on the link to the right of the log in text box that says "Log in with OpenID"
3) This takes you to a page with a bit of information about OpenID and what it is. Enter your OpenID URL in the textbox (if you're using LJ for your OpenID, you should be able to use username.livejournal.com.
4) Click the "Login" button, which redirects you to livejournal.com, where you can log onto your account to confirm that it really is you trying to log on to Dreamwidth.
5) Click one of the "yes" buttons.
6) (Optional) Comment here to confirm that it works!