Working on the various modes, but here is the gist and features!
What we want
Single-item visibility toggles allowing users to set an item visible to a given set of users or group. On top of this, we want users to have default preferences based by the 14 media, creators, characters, and possibly when replying to users.
Suggested Visibility Modes
- everyone
- update can be seen by anybody in any stream view
- user
- update can be seen by all users in any stream view
- follower
- update is only visible to followers (1-way friends)
- friend
- update is only visible to friends
- hidden
- update is visible to friends, but not displayed on their stream view
- locked
- update is not visible to any other party
- group
- update may be public, but only displayed in the group view
Now we can see that group posses a problem, since the user may wish to have the item posted only to a group, but not viewable in their public stream, or the group stream view. What this allows is that friends within a given group may share updates without joining the entire group stream. (This would require the friends be part of the given group)
At this time, there is no integration between the friend stream view and group views. This may continue as two separate views; the user viewing all or one of the groups to which they subscribe and the user viewing their friends’ activity.
It is necessary to mention the default user preferences when they post. Given the 14 media, creator, and character contexts, it is possible to set the default visibility per context-type. A user may have all their events visible by default, but can specify certain contexts to be friends-only or entirely private. In this situation, the default preference should be submissive to an override field in the action/announce API methods. Thus allowing select items to have a visibility outside of the user’s prefs.
I like it. Now writing the backend to change a user’s updates when they switch preferences will not be fun for the db, but it’s entirely doable. It should also be noted that the user needs the ability to change stream item visibility at will, though changing from public to private will not be advised since the visibility may still exists through feed caches or other node subscriptions.
