holman/feedback — Issue #73: Re: "Don't give your users shit work"
Author: xaotica
Created: 2011-11-03 10:28:25+00:00
State: open

I read http://zachholman.com/posts/shit-work and since you disabled comments, I decided to go post a comment anyway via another method. Isn't that great? :P

I study usability / UX / etc. In general, I agree that systems should use data they already have about user behavior to predict what people would want. I'm very fond of http://www.last.fm, for example...

I am one of those people who obsessively uses lists / groups / circles / whatever equivalent feature exists on social networks. I have ~500 email filters. I disagree with Merlin's "something is either important, or it isn't." What's important depends heavily on context.

For example, suppose your goal with Facebook lists is to prevent some people from seeing an update. If I make a post using my default setting (custom security, a certain custom list excluded) that works the way I'd intend. Some people see the update, and they also see that it wasn't a public update. But if I decide to use one of Facebook's auto-generated lists, that isn't what happens. People who are on the "friends" list see the update... and they also see a list of everyone else who saw the update. If I'm excluding someone from viewing something online, my goal is not to say "Hey guys! I'm telling you this, but I'm not telling my recent ex, or Bob, or Janet."

To predict who I'd want on a list, Facebook watches our interactions. If everyone I liked was equally active on Facebook, that could work. But they aren't. So Facebook recommends the people who are most interested in me. I can decline those recommendations, but I have no way to give real feedback about it like "nobody who has my website as an interest is actually my friend" or "nobody at is my friend". I don't have any way to see the criteria they use to make recommendations and edit them so that it could actually be useful. Clicking the x a thousand times to decline useless recommendations isn't more efficient than just creating lists myself.

As far as the likelihood of people you wouldn't expect / intend getting on autogenerated filters:
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/11/01/facebook_infiltration_bots

Part of what creates the problem with lists / groups / circles / etc. is that there's usually no setting that exists for the way I want a social network to operate. I want it to be easy for people to contact me privately online. I don't care if they want to use Facebook, Twitter, Google+, Diaspora, IM, email, etc. I'm not private online in the traditional sense. I don't mind if "random" people find something useful in my content. However, I prefer knowing how many people are seeing something and who they are.

Currently I have 1,300 twitter followers. My level of interest in them varies considerably. Some are very interesting. Some are spambots. Some are real life friends who post boring things. Some of them post about a topic that is usually not helpful / relevant to me, but occasionally is. (For example, I occasionally visit SF, so tweets about cool events in SF are helpful when I'm there, and not interesting when I'm not.)

If the followers are at all interesting / cool, I want them to be able to DM me. They can only do that if I follow them.
Similar issue with Facebook and Google+ and every other site. If I want to have any idea who's reading the less-public content, my option is to accept friend requests. But following / friending implies that I may be reading their content or giving a vote of confidence in some way. So lists / circles / whatever give me the ability to filter what I read, but they don't provide what I actually want.

In my mind, the general loose categories of people I don't follow are:

- I don't follow you regularly, but I want to bookmark you and read what you write during a certain time period
- I don't follow you, but you seem cool
- You seem lame or write stuff I don't like
- You are a spammer and/or a spambot

I'd want to be able to give positive feedback / extra permissions to message me without implying that I'm "following" but the only system I have is "you're either important or you're not."