Comments on: FriendFeed, trainwrecks and accelerated discussions

By: walt

walt — Fri, 23 Oct 2009 20:56:02 +0000

Iris FTW! I had no idea (there aren’t many of them). And, fortunately, the little lock isn’t vanished by the Stylish styles I use in FF (to get rid of avatars and generally make it a little more compact.

Given that, I’ll change my plans a little:
*If it’s a private thread, I would never use names or direct quotations and would rarely even refer to the thread indirectly. (Rarely=Almost never).
*If it’s a public thread, I’ll try to respect the more casual nature of the medium (“what GeekChic says”), but somewhat less stringently.

By: GeekChic

GeekChic — Fri, 23 Oct 2009 20:06:55 +0000

I think I can understand why the people on FriendFeed would prefer to have a private place to “talk” (if that’s the right word). I don’t know if society is fully comfortable with the quasi-openness of the web/internet (witness the fact that I use a pseudonym).

That said, nothing submitted to the web/internet in the free and clear is truly private and everyone (even me) has to get used to it.

I’m glad Iris chimed in to make your life easier.

By: Iris

Iris — Fri, 23 Oct 2009 18:12:35 +0000

Actually, you can identify threads that start out as private. Each one has a little grey lock just under the post itself on the far left.

By: walt

walt — Fri, 23 Oct 2009 16:48:50 +0000

Thanks (and I hope to get more comments). The tenor of the thread on FF was different, at least partially–people seem to think that I should request permission, or at least notify, before quoting anybody. That’s simply not feasible; if I had to do that for all quotations, I’d shut down C&I (or always paraphrase and get constant “but nobody said that” or “why aren’t you quoting” responses).

There is a problem: There’s no easy way to identify threads that began as private, if you’re subscribed to any private feeds.

For now, my solution is to treat FF threads as “nature of conversation” materials–that is, to discuss what’s being said if it’s useful, but typically without direct quotation or naming names. I’m not entirely thrilled with that solution, but I do sense that people think of FF comments as more ephemeral than blog-post comments, even if they’re not really. And the lack of clear ID for private feeds (once you’re subscribed) gives me considerable pause.

Anyway, more comments certainly welcome!

By: GeekChic

GeekChic — Fri, 23 Oct 2009 04:18:01 +0000

I’d agree with Stephen. Anything committed to the web or the internet – unless explicitly marked private – is easily searchable so you should feel free to use it and quote it. If the material is marked private, then you (or anyone else) should ask first.

[Full disclosure: I do not, at the moment, use FriendFeed.]

By: Stephen Francoeur

Stephen Francoeur — Thu, 22 Oct 2009 21:03:18 +0000

I’d say it is not “inappropriate or undesirable for your FriendFeed comments to be used in secondary discussions in the same way your blog post and comments might be.” Unless you’ve made your FriendFeed private, I would regard anything you’ve posted online there to be public information and fair game for discussion, analysis, quoting, etc. The content FriendFeed is searchable from within the FriendFeed interface; some day it will likely be crawled and indexed by search engines. Are there really people who would expect what they write on FriendFeed to safe from being discussed elsewhere even though it is a public forum?