profile privacy in IPB 4

[GreenLinks]

That is absolute nonsense. Matt has been more than reasonable in his response to this thread.

How is this "my way or the highway?" This is the co-founder of Invision Power Services stating that, though this feature is not going to be included in 4.0, he is open to listening to and considering feedback for implementing this into a future version of IP.Board.

"My way or the highway" is "we don't think this is a useful feature, so we're not going to implement it. If you don't like it, you can always go back to using vBulletin or Xenforo." The majority of your statements here are really completely baseless.

I have no idea where you are pulling your train of logic from. If you post your credit card information or SSN publicly anywhere on the internet, you are an absolute idiot. This is information you never post publicly, anywhere. So how is this statement even remotely relevant to the topic at hand here, which is adding profile privacy options to your IP.Board forum profile?

Assuming you're an insane, likely non-PCI compliant website administrator who has a SSN profile field for members to fill in on your forum, you can already choose to have custom profile fields only visible to administrators. This is obviously not a field that you'd want visible to "friends only," this is a field that should never be publicly viewable to anyone. So again, what is your point here? I really don't understand what you're trying to say or prove.

I think your logic is collapsed. I'm honestly getting the impression that you may be drunk from this post.

Why? Because you can't set profile fields to be visible to "friends only"? Even though in IP.Gallery, albums can be set as visible to Friends Only? Even though in IP.Blog, you can go even further and have blogs visible to only to a custom defined group of people as well as friends only?

That's nonsense. You're doing nothing but derailing this topic from a potentially constructive feedback thread into another "hey guys, let's all bash IPS for no real reason whatsoever!" topic. This really needs to stop.

Dude , sorry but i don't care who you are and what you do. However you and me clearly run our board differently.

That's why either stay away from my responses or add me to your ignore list. I have no time to fitful your childish fight requests.

[Makoto]

Dude , sorry but i don't care who you are and what you do.

The feeling is mutual. I don't care who you are, or how special you think you are. All I see in front of me is someone with an attitude problem.

Just as well, all I'm doing is pointing out the gaping holes in your logic, and I will as well continue doing so as long as you keep behaving insensibly.

Start partaking in this conversation in a more constructive manner and we'll have no problems. I'm not trying to start a fight with you. I'd recommend you take a few minutes to calm down and really go through and re-read what you're saying here.

[Matt]

It is extremely sad to see IPB management's distance with privacy.

Actually it is best not to separate anything at all because privacy is not something that needs to separated.

The ignorance from IPB team is directly related to my way or the highway method.

You are selling a script Matt , not generating a script for your own usage. So making things flexible is a requirement.

Now lets get back to the point where your team misses.

Everything you post to internet is also Public Matt so i wonder if your credit cart information , home address , social security number etc.. are live published to everyone or are you keeping that safe ? The answer to all your questions actually lays here Matt.

You are looking at thinking this completely wrong and as you can see with just one simple question all your logic is collapsed.

Piracy is getting more and more important each other day and it will only become more important.

But yet again this thread pointed out a very clear truth :

IPB team have no idea what privacy means...

Whoa there tiger.

Lets take a deep breath; close your eyes and imagine you're standing on a beach. The waves are lapping at your feet. The sun is on your face. You feel happy and relaxed.

Ok, feeling good? Great!

Now lets get back to the point where your team misses.

Everything you post to internet is also Public Matt so i wonder if your credit cart information , home address , social security number etc.. are live published to everyone or are you keeping that safe ? The answer to all your questions actually lays here Matt.

Lets scale back the drama a little. Even our eCommerce software, IP.Nexus, does not store your credit card information. We don't ask for your home address and actually, by default, IP.Board only asks for an email address (which is kept private) and a display name that does not have to be your real name. That is the only information you need to enter to register an account.

To start ranting that we don't care about security of credit card numbers is plainly as mad as a box of frogs. It's not relevant and it doesn't make any sense and is completely out of context with this discussion which so far amounts to keeping your AOL messenger name private.

But yet again this thread pointed out a very clear truth :

IPB team have no idea what privacy means...

Nonsense. IP.Nexus doesn't store credit card information because we felt it best to not do that. We take great pains to ensure that your email address isn't exposed to other members. We were the first forum system to introduce personal conversations. We have extensive permission systems throughout all our software to make it as flexible and as permissive as the admin chooses.

What you really mean is that because I didn't agree with you completely and implement your ideas then it must mean that we're clueless.

I've asked for some suggestions on what you'd like to see for a future version within the realm of privacy. I'm seeing some good ideas come in which is great. I'd like to see more of that and less of this.

Thanks.

[Soniceffect]

To start ranting that we don't care about security of credit card numbers is plainly as mad as a box of frogs.

Hang on a minute!!! You mean IPS does now care about my box of frogs? I consider them to be well looked after and, to be quite honest, they like their box. I suggest IPS as a company puts far more effort into ensuring my box of frogs is looked after during the course of IPS4 or I shall be leaving to join the RSPCBF (Royal Society for the Provension of Cruelty to Boxed Frogs).

PS:- Should you care about my staying, please ensure Lilypads are programmed into your next release

:P

[Matt]

I can't help anyone that owns a box full of frogs regardless of how humanely they're kept.

[GreenLinks]

Whoa there tiger.

Lets take a deep breath; close your eyes and imagine you're standing on a beach. The waves are lapping at your feet. The sun is on your face. You feel happy and relaxed.

Ok, feeling good? Great!

I already have amazing sun here and i am chill , no need for any additional drama scenery ;)

Lets scale back the drama a little. Even our eCommerce software, IP.Nexus, does not store your credit card information. We don't ask for your home address and actually, by default, IP.Board only asks for an email address (which is kept private) and a display name that does not have to be your real name. That is the only information you need to enter to register an account.

To start ranting that we don't care about security of credit card numbers is plainly as mad as a box of frogs. It's not relevant and it doesn't make any sense and is completely out of context with this discussion which so far amounts to keeping your AOL messenger name private.

Nonsense. IP.Nexus doesn't store credit card information because we felt it best to not do that. We take great pains to ensure that your email address isn't exposed to other members. We were the first forum system to introduce personal conversations. We have extensive permission systems throughout all our software to make it as flexible and as permissive as the admin chooses.

Thanks.

Matt there are industry standards for security for specifically e-commerce. Leaving information out is not the best practise. Best practise is achieving PCI compliancy at least on software wise. Then your team would do best coding standards for a e-commerce solution. Of course only software is not enough but yet if you achieve these standards , everyone will clearly salute you and your team.

Credit card information is actually extremely relevant to the discussion we are having here as any personal information can be recognised as private to all different users.

Xenforo is a forum only solution where your claim about community profiles are being public maybe accepted. However IPB is a site solution software where every license owner shall modify requirements according to their needs.

What you really mean is that because I didn't agree with you completely and implement your ideas then it must mean that we're clueless.

I've asked for some suggestions on what you'd like to see for a future version within the realm of privacy. I'm seeing some good ideas come in which is great. I'd like to see more of that and less of this.

Actually not true again but no need to continue arguing here.

[Makoto]

Best practise is achieving PCI compliancy at least on software wise.

Okay. So now we've jumped ship from profile privacy to PCI compliance, which have literally almost nothing at all to do with each other, unless you have custom profile fields for your users to enter in their credit card numbers or other highly sensitive information in, which if you do, you're insane.

Actually, even then this would still be irrelevant, because fields that contain highly sensitive information like this would never be visible to other members, as in, they'd be private fields only viewable by staff members. Which, again, is already possible, and if you don't believe me..

This is all, once again, ignoring how awful of an idea storing your clients credit card or SSN data in profile fields is, not to mention completely and utterly unnecessary when using IP.Nexus.

I run a forum with IP.Nexus. I handle credit card transactions. I use Stripe to do this, and I am fully PCI compliant. Allowing your member to flag information on their profile as viewable to friends only has literally nothing to do with any of this, and I'm confused as to why you keep bringing it up.

[Crystal V]

Coming back to to talking about profile privacy... put in my vote for friends only profile fields and/or profiles. I run a forum where most of the members are women and they've been asking for profile privacy since even before Facebook became popular. I've had to boot my fair share of ex-boyfriends who have cyber-stalked their ex through the use of my forum. Not that this will change with forum privacy but at least my members won't feel the need to make their whole profile blank and instead could make it friends only.

What I've mainly seen requests for is:

1. Making the whole profile private except for approved friends.
2. Making contact fields (Skype, etc.) or other fields private except for approved friends.

[Soniceffect]

Best practise is achieving PCI compliancy at least on software wise.

Actually as someone who deals with exactly this on a day to day basis this is incorrect. Best practice is not to store any credit card information where these is not a need for that information to be retained by the company. The only place in which should keep part of the payment processing information should be the payment processor and this information should be PCI complient, completely encrypted, and the information should be available to the user upon request. This information needs to be kept for a minimum of 7 years in order to comply with international accounting standards.

IPS is not the payment processor, and therefore has no obligation to store (and in fact should not) the credit card details.

[Matt]

Coming back to to talking about profile privacy... put in my vote for friends only profile fields and/or profiles. I run a forum where most of the members are women and they've been asking for profile privacy since even before Facebook became popular. I've had to boot my fair share of ex-boyfriends who have cyber-stalked their ex through the use of my forum. Not that this will change with forum privacy but at least my members won't feel the need to make their whole profile blank and instead could make it friends only.

What I've mainly seen requests for is:

1. Making the whole profile private except for approved friends.
2. Making contact fields (Skype, etc.) or other fields private except for approved friends.

I can see merit in #2 because that is information that is not available elsewhere on the board, so this makes sense.

[Donkerrood]

Coming back to to talking about profile privacy... put in my vote for friends only profile fields and/or profiles. I run a forum where most of the members are women and they've been asking for profile privacy since even before Facebook became popular. I've had to boot my fair share of ex-boyfriends who have cyber-stalked their ex through the use of my forum. Not that this will change with forum privacy but at least my members won't feel the need to make their whole profile blank and instead could make it friends only.

What I've mainly seen requests for is:

1. Making the whole profile private except for approved friends.
2. Making contact fields (Skype, etc.) or other fields private except for approved friends.

I've had that same problem on my community. We now have installed a hook that even sets user-names to blanks for guests and doesn't display avatars to guests. We've set profiles inaccessible for guests. Two forums are inaccessible for guests.

This does the job pretty well, but I can see value in the 'only visible for friends' option, because if that's in the architecture of the community suite, this will make it easier to hook into that option in other areas.

[Charles]

This topic has gone way off the rails. I am going to summarize it:

To say we do not care about privacy is just ridiculous. Let's stop the :frantics: and be reasonable. No Internet company is around for 12+ years without any care whatsoever about privacy.

What we are saying is that we do not agree with the concept of breaking content discovery. There have been a lot of comparisons to Facebook but it may shock you that we are not Facebook nor is the site you are running under our software Facebook. The ideas and thought process of how Facebook approach privacy is illogical on a community forum system like we make.

So what makes more sense? Simple: the Twitter model.

On Twitter everything is public and you can choose to follow someone that interest you. That person, however, has no obligation to follow or otherwise care. So let's turn this into how our system works.

I am reading a forum and see that user Matt posts some incredibly interesting things. I have read several of his enlightened posts and decide I want to see what else he says. So I click his name and.... whoops he's enabled "Profile Privacy" and I cannot find his other content. Now of cousre that's not true as "Profile Privacy" doesn't really make anything private as to even find his profile I will have already read his posts but that's irrelevant at this point. Matt's decision enable this setting has broken content discovery. I am a new visitor to this community, found something of interest, was blocked from discovering more, and now I leave and never return. Interest lost.

My point is quite simple: our goal here is content discovery. If users can, on a whim, block content discovery your community breaks. People cannot find what interests them. Now of course the administrator of the site can designate non-public areas and if you post in those areas that content will not show on a profile unless someone has access to it. That makes sense.

Now another way to look at this is that a profile on a forum community is not the same as a profile on something like Facebook. This is a simple idea when you think about it. On something like Facebook you are the content controller. You post a status update on a profile you own, people make comments on your status update, and so on. You totally control the experience as you own that segment.

However, on a forum community you are not the content controller. The administrator of the community, and how they setup their community, is the controller. As soon as you press submit on a new topic you no longer control that content. You have started a conversation but, unlike on Facebook, you do not control that content. It becomes an organic discussion that could go on long after you're gone.

Along that same line of thought your profile on this site is really not you as an individual. It's your activity in the community. That activity is publicly viewable. You do not "own" that activity as it's just part of the collective conversation. It's not Facebook.

So with the concept of "Profile Privacy" what are we really talking about here? There's are really only a few things:

Blocking Discovery of User Generated Content

This is not something we are going to do. It breaks content discovery and that's just silly. It's also not really private! If user Matt blocks his profile I can just use an alternative search method (even Google) to find his publicly-viewable posts. So what's really been made private? Nothing. It would be inappropriate for us to implement something that's a false sense a privacy. Your community permissions already handle all non-public privacy on your behalf. For example, on this site here, if you post in our Client Lounge non-clients cannot see that in your profile feed. If I post in our private staff-only forum no one sees that in my profile.

Blocking User Contact Details

The obvious response here is simple: if you don't want people knowing your Skype or whatever else then don't publish it in your profile. That being said there is a valid use case here as that is truly a personal content item. So we are looking at easy to manage ways to allow for that information to not be broadcast into the world.

Randomly Blocking stuff for Guests

We are not going to implement features that make communities unattractive to those not logged in. The majority of traffic to any community are people who are not logged in. If you make their experience unfriendly by blocking content discovery, photos, username display, etc. then they'll at best just never register an account or at worst leave and never return because it's irritating to browse.

I'm sure many of you will disagree and that's fine but our job is looking at the bigger picture. Trust me when I say you will want to pull your hair out if every IPS-powered site you visit didn't allow you to browse content because it was all half-hidden behind fake privacy walls :smile:

And in closing nothing personally bothers me more than when people say we don't listen to feedback. Everything we do is based on feedback. Does that mean we act on every single line of feedback posted? No. We sometimes don't agree or sometimes have a different viewpoint as we get feedback from tens of thousands of clients so look at it all differently.

Let people easily participate in your community. Let them find content posted. Encourage them to participate. Stop putting up barriers. Make it fun.

[Rimi]

Uh. I mean. I agree with what Charles said but last I checked Twitter has an option to make your profile private so that only your friends can see your tweets. lol

[ZakRhyno]

I have seen this pointed out to you in other threads already and you seem to have missed it: you can already do this.

http://community.invisionpower.com/index.php?app=core&module=usercp

Under Friends check "Allow me to approve members before they're added as a friend"

The person whom reply is someone I have block thus I didn't see the reply.

Thanks tho!

[CallieJo]

As far as content discovery. That works fine when talking about forum threads & posts. But, we are talking about contact info, profile comments, etc. If you are so worried about searching for member posts, click their name (use the popup) or use the search options or use the memberlist!

It has nothing to do with hiding posts and threads/topics. Just because you can find those in the search when profiles are private on XF, has nothing to do with the private option that still hides contact info, the comment archives, and many many other information from third-party apps that friends like sharing with JUST friends on XF. If you want to use VB as an example, how about looking at the screenshot I posted earlier. Nowhere can you see those things if set to private...unless you are a friend. Again, it has nothing to do with the forum threads & posts. VB actually doesn't hide the whole profile. So, if you MUST use the profile to search for their posts instead of other options...well, you can still.

And did IPS not state that 4.0 will allow admins to break free from requiring forums? Why does everything fall back on public forum content when we ask for profile privacy? Two different beasts, IMHO.

As far as members not controlling content, I beg to differ. They control their profile comments & updates & contact info...etc. If some of us don't allow guests to see profiles, then why say that most users are guests discovering content. I don't allow guests to view profiles. Therefor, they are not discovering "that" content.

There should be some kind of value on having friends other than just listing mugshots.
Would have been nice to at least have these minimal options:

• Profile comment updates should be friends only.
• Contact info should be friends only.
• Continue consistancy across all apps. Other app content on profiles should retain friends only privacy options. IE: blogs, personal albums...

This information should NOT be accessible anywhere else unless you are a friend if set to friends only.

We all know the benefit of friends/followers with every other popular website on the internet, but not in IPS community websites.

IPS products work great for IPS and likewise websites. Instead of basing assumptions on this particular community, I'd suggest looking at not only competitors (who DO have better profile privacy) but also the most popular websites on the internet that are geared toward regular internet users and not just admins and developers. There lies the problem.

Funniest answer I've ever heard, "tell members not to share anything personal"....LMAO!...Really? I suppose all websites are telling members not to share anything personal and they really do listen, right? Should we ban all those sharing people who did not listen? Someone should tell the internet they are doing something wrong.

How about we ask IPS...

• What is the point in profile friends in IPS?
• What is the benefit of an all or nothing admin option as opposed to a member choice option?
• What would make grandma feel better?
• What about businesses that want to reward their friends for following them with special updates? And encourage users to sign-up to friend them for those special updates?
• What about parenting sites that want to share their personal updates w/ family & friends only?
• What about health sites that want to share private info with just a select few friends?

Should we tell them all to go to the next big social network instead? If yes, then what's the point in creating our own communities? They do not need our communities...there's always other options. A missing fact here is that communities create personal relationships & connections. It's not just about the public content. It does NOT take content to keep members in a community...it takes a whole lot more than that!

I admit defeat....clearly some of us was hoping 4.0 would step-up the profiles.

[Rugger]

Wow.. 7 pages worth! I have to thank you all for providing me with some great procrastination material, it is very much appreciated.

One of the things that has become apparent to me is that everyone here is running different forums for different topics (some so large they just have to mention it). I personally run the largest website on the internet! (ok i'm lying).

We are all using this platform because it is the best for our needs as a base however there are many changes we have made to make it our own and our websites unique - IPS (correct me if i'm wrong) is interested in producing software that is good for the majority whilst providing the means via configuration to change the most common settings. For changes that cannot be made by a simple configuration change there are applications and hooks with a great community driving them - the minority can use these features to make additional changes.

In my opinion IPS has done a great job (yeah I get we pay them but no harm with a pat on the back) with not only providing features but also providing the means to get non-standard features.

Now to this privacy/profile topic. My understanding is we have several parties here interested in similar yet different features, some wanting more 'social style' privacy options where the user is in control of their entire profile, some wanting privacy for specific fields, others.. well not sure they know themselves. I think some of the people that have made suggestions are looking for something fairly specialised and may need custom applications or hooks.

I like how it has been suggested that users could select whether certain fields (dictated by the site admin) are shown in their profile or not. This I think would suit the majority of websites. The whole 'friends' viewing this and that option.. starts to complicate it for what I would think is the majority - that's people that are using the software for discussion of topic where the main focus is on the forums (correct me if i'm wrong (i'm not talking individually here, only the majority)).

That's it really just wanted to put my thoughts in and that I like that (single) suggestion, the rest wouldn't affect me to be honest.

Thanks for reading :smile:

EDIT:

[Dylan Riggs]

Sooooo.

I think I'm missing something - What does content discovery have to do with giving users more granular control over who sees what on your profile? Unless that's the example of breaking content discovery?

There was a post with what vBulletin does (in the 4.2x and even 3.8x days.. ancient now) that allowed more control over who is allowed to view your profile. Atleast for a 2015-2016 (yeah I said it) COMMUNITY SUITE software, could atleast compare in something 8 years old's privacy settings, when FaceBook didn't even exist on a large scale

I just ask that when 4.0 hits, that we can show/hide certain information from our profiles to who we want to show it to. I'm not that big on Privacy myself, but from using multiple platforms, IPS's profile privacy (the name of this very topic) has the least amount of control from free and paid software, and since it's paid software, we ought to get more control in a few areas already mentioned in this topic.

And for content discovery, wouldn't these settings/options only effect those who use the? In which case, that is their decision? If Joe wants to ruin his content discovery for privacy, that's joe's choice. He simply has the options, not a set automatically engaged.

[Rimi]

Everything you post to internet is also Public Matt so i wonder if your credit cart information , home address , social security number etc.. are live published to everyone or are you keeping that safe ? The answer to all your questions actually lays here Matt.

This analogy is so terrible. :D

Funniest answer I've ever heard, "tell members not to share anything personal"....LMAO!...Really? I suppose all websites are telling members not to share anything personal and they really do listen, right? Should we ban all those sharing people who did not listen? Someone should tell the internet they are doing something wrong.

It's kind of a fact of the internet. It's like sending someone naked pictures of yourself. Do it privately or not, it's going to end up on 4chan eventually. No matter what "privacy options" you give yourself through the software, once you submit a piece of personal data into the database it's out there and you do not control it. Lets say you want to put your skype information on your profile for your friends to see, but you absolutely hate my guts and don't want me to see it. Let's say that your forum software of choice helps you accomplish that. What stops me from getting one of your friends to give me that information? Who knows, we might have a mutual friend. Maybe the admin of the site is a buddy of mine and will give me that information. What if I made a new account, acted like a completely different person, and managed to befriend you all in order to get that "private" information? What if I manage to hack your account? What if I manage to hack your friend's account? What if a bug in the software allows me to bypass the privacy blocks?

The point that IPS is trying to make, and the point that is constantly flying over your head is that once you submit a piece of data onto the internet you are no longer in control of it. You may think that you control it with "privacy options", but fact is that if I want your contact info and I'm dedicated to obtaining that contact info and you've submitted it in some way shape or form into a site's database, then I will get your contact info eventually. IPS doesn't approve of giving people a false sense of security with "privacy options" when so many methods of bypassing them exist. Seriously. All I have to do is get on your friends list or get close to someone who already is on your friends list and suddenly I have access to everything. I mean think of all the thousands of girls who send pics of their tits to their boyfriends which all end up on the internet a few days later. In fact it even happened on an old site of mine. A girl on there showed her tits to a guy in a PM (you know - a PRIVATE MESSAGE). That guy showed the picture to all his friends (including me - oman those were some amazing tits o.o ) and completely humiliated her. It's a fact of the internet. If you submit personal data online in any way shape or form, you lose control of it. Face it. You are asking for fake security, and that is not what IPS is going to set out to do.

Your other concern is only allowing friends to comment on your profile. That's not really privacy at all, and is what Matt and co. are referring to when they say that they want this topic to focus on privacy and the (lack of) validity thereof.

[wingman23]

i just dont get why this has got so complicated. its not rocket science, well making it work is but the idea is simple enough

just make a button in the settings that a member can choose to turn on if they want friends only to see their profile...., make some fields like skype a sort of private 2 settings that members can pick and choose which members can place into that category so only friends in private 2 settings can see these contact details

leave the posts alone, they dont need to be private (non discoverable), we have private forums already for posts we dont want for general public viewing..

If a person thinks another person is interesting and wants to see more then whats so hard about clicking a button that says "request to be friend".. :sweat: click a button. oh nooo much too hard that :devil:

people are making this more complicated and convoluted than it needs to be, but then, thats what people do i suppose.... :sorcerer:

[Morgin]

Charles broke it down pretty succinctly and it sounds like some of you are just talking past him vs listening to what he's saying.

Any form of "privacy" with respect to content will not be done at a profile level. The forum already controls who can see what posts. Adding a "friend' layer to confuse that (people cant see your posts from your profile, but could see if they did a direct search, is an illogical way for software to operate).

Privacy with respect to "extras" is something they dont currently have planned but are at least listening to. There is obviously an argument on certain forums that maybe people would want to fill in their skype name or phone number or other forum specific stuff, but they want more granular control over who can see that based on who their friends on the forum are. Great. Conversation over. They are considering it, but it's not in 4.0.

Am I totally missing it, because to me that seems the entirety of this 8 page thread.

[Rimi]

Charles broke it down pretty succinctly and it sounds like some of you are just talking past him vs listening to what he's saying.

Any form of "privacy" with respect to content will not be done at a profile level. The forum already controls who can see what posts. Adding a "friend' layer to confuse that (people cant see your posts from your profile, but could see if they did a direct search, is an illogical way for software to operate).

Privacy with respect to "extras" is something they dont currently have planned but are at least listening to. There is obviously an argument on certain forums that maybe people would want to fill in their skype name or phone number or other forum specific stuff, but they want more granular control over who can see that based on who their friends on the forum are. Great. Conversation over. They are considering it, but it's not in 4.0.

Am I totally missing it, because to me that seems the entirety of this 8 page thread.

Nah. You pretty much got it. High five.

[wingman23]

I am reading a forum and see that user Matt posts some incredibly interesting things. I have read several of his enlightened posts and decide I want to see what else he says. So I click his name and.... whoops he's enabled "Profile Privacy" and I cannot find his other content. Now of cousre that's not true as "Profile Privacy" doesn't really make anything private as to even find his profile I will have already read his posts but that's irrelevant at this point. Matt's decision enable this setting has broken content discovery. I am a new visitor to this community, found something of interest, was blocked from discovering more, and now I leave and never return. Interest lost.

With respect Charles, this is sooo confusing and sounds like nonsense... if he is that interesting, and im sure Matt is, then im sure he is worth clicking a button that requests to be his friend. I really dont think people are that fickle as to come across a private profile with a button to click to request a friendship as so hard and disorientating that the new member just ups and leaves without a trace never to return...im not being rude but that's nonsense.

Its almost like IPS arent getting it and for some reason are making it out to be some sort of community breaker, when in fact its the opposite, a person is more likely to leave your site if they dont feel their privacy is under control, and some people want more privacy than others depending again what type of community you run...

Flexibility is the key word here, :thumbsup:

[Rimi]

With respect Charles, this is sooo confusing and sounds like nonsense... if he is that interesting, and im sure Matt is, then im sure he is worth clicking a button that requests to be his friend. I really dont think people are that fickle as to come across a private profile with a button to click to request a friendship as so hard and disorientating that the new member just ups and leaves without a trace never to return...im not being rude but that's nonsense.

Its almost like IPS arent getting it and for some reason are making it out to be some sort of community breaker, when in fact its the opposite, a person is more likely to leave your site if they dont feel their privacy is under control, and some people want more privacy than others depending again what type of community you run...

Flexibility is the key word here, :thumbsup:

I've done it before. .-. It's why xenforo sucks so bad. So many people block off their profile that I just don't stick around those communities for that long. Maybe what you're saying applies to members who've been around for a while, but not for completely new members.

[Morgin]

With respect Charles, this is sooo confusing and sounds like nonsense... if he is that interesting, and im sure Matt is, then im sure he is worth clicking a button that requests to be his friend. I really dont think people are that fickle as to come across a private profile with a button to click to request a friendship as so hard and disorientating that the new member just ups and leaves without a trace never to return...im not being rude but that's nonsense.

Its almost like IPS arent getting it and for some reason are making it out to be some sort of community breaker, when in fact its the opposite, a person is more likely to leave your site if they dont feel their privacy is under control, and some people want more privacy than others depending again what type of community you run...

Flexibility is the key word here, :thumbsup:

Confusing would be a use case where I can read a post on a forum, I can do a search for posts by a certain user, but a profile feature specifically designed to allow me to look at that particular user's content would be protected by some privacy screen the user arbitrarily put in place. Maybe I don't want to be their friend but I just want to check their post history to see if they have a history of being a jerk or something. I'd be annoyed if I had to then go specifically to search to get around some silly pseudo privacy screen that doesn't actually do what it's supposed to do anyway, given content is always controlled by forum and usergroup level permissions.

Like he said, SOME stuff that is not "content" maybe makes sense to be hidden to all but a whitelist of "friends" (telephone number, email, skype address, where they live, age, etc), but it will never make sense to do this for posted content.

[Dylan Riggs]

Confusing would be a use case where I can read a post on a forum, I can do a search for posts by a certain user, but a profile feature specifically designed to allow me to look at that particular user's content would be protected by some privacy screen the user arbitrarily put in place. Maybe I don't want to be their friend but I just want to check their post history to see if they have a history of being a jerk or something. I'd be annoyed if I had to then go specifically to search to get around some silly pseudo privacy screen that doesn't actually do what it's supposed to do anyway, given content is always controlled by forum and usergroup level permissions.

Like he said, SOME stuff that is not "content" maybe makes sense to be hidden to all but a whitelist of "friends" (telephone number, email, skype address, where they live, age, etc), but it will never make sense to do this for posted content.

Well, in your exeample that would be under "content privacy" - This whole topic is about 'profile privacy' - What Wingman wants (As do I) is more control over who can view your profile and it's own content, not everything else. I could care less if someone wants to research all my posts on a forum, but I would care if people could research my skype name, or any other custom fields set in place that is only posted in my profile that while I don't care really gets out, I wouldn't want 43,000+ people looking at. Maybe only the 15 or so listed in my profile.

In that example given - You could alleviate the rage by just having a simple text description of "Only Friends are allowed to view this profile" - This way, this makes you have the ability of not only allowing you to research a users content and have this ever so wanted content discovery, but also allows that user to hide some of his profile if he doesn't want to shell it out. You might not want to be a friend with him, but he doesn't want non friends to view his profile :P

The big point some of us are trying to make, isn't that we want to change features that are stock, we just want extra OPTIONS, settings, a simple SWITCH to give us a litlte more control over our profiles (and other areas). For me, it's not that big of a deal personally - I honestly could care less, but I'd like to see IPS's profile have more control, it's not up to par with the other software I've mentioned in this regards, that's all.

And I doubt it'd take much effort to give these options come out - It might be better suited for hook, who really knows?