Keeping track of your friends list

[nancylebov]

It seems as though other people can keep track of how many people have friended them and who shows up and who leaves. How do you do it?

Comments

[nwhyte]

http://marnanel.org/joule?user=nancylebov&mode=chart

[nancylebov.livejournal.com]

I'm almost sorry I checked. I assume it's very poor form to ask people why they left.

[nwhyte]

Since they could have left any time since 17 September last year, they've probably forgotten why by now...

[ckd]

In at least one case on your list, the user changed usernames; that winds up looking like a defriending by olduser and a friending by newuser.

Yes

[redbird]

Sometimes people post that they're purging their lists because things got out of hand--too much to read, too much else to do. Otherwise, you can ask, but there's the risk of it coming out as "why don't you like me anymore?" and that's potentially fraught.

[beamjockey.livejournal.com]

I'm almost sorry I checked. I assume it's very poor form to ask people why they left.

Conventional wisdom advises us not to take it as a personal affront, as there could be any number of reasons.

I'll tell you why I added you to my list: For years, you have been among the most interesting writers on rasff and other Usenet groups I read. It occurs to me that you probably don't know that I think that. So I "friended" you to read more.

So far, your LJ does not disappoint.

It is hard to get a discussion going that lasts more than 24 hours around here, though.

I don't, usually...

[velvet-wood.livejournal.com]

Every once in a while I'll check and see if anyone new has added me, and if so I'll look at their journal and if it looks okay, I'll add them. I frequently wonder why the heck they added me, as I rarely know who they are, but I've never found a polite way to ask, so I just go on wondering. :)

I never get my feelings hurt when people defriend me, though. I know that most people keep a _much_ longer list than I do, and that my own journal is rather bland and depressing, so I certainly don't blame them for putting me in the first round of cuts. Now, if my husband were to defriend me, there'd be _problems_! But anyone else...their choice, not really my business. I honestly think the term 'friends list' gives this stuff more emotional connotation than is truly justified. I mean, several of the journals I read are of people I've never met, never talked to, and rarely even respond to; I just read them because they're amusing. You wouldn't consider a newspaper columnist you read regularly to be a 'friend' and be insulted if sie didn't read your letters to the editor, and to me, at least with the majority of stuff I read, it's much closer to that than it is to writing letters to close personal friends.

V

[malkingrey.livejournal.com]

More of a "don't ask; you might not like the answer" kind of thing, most of the time.

The whole friending and unfriending emotional thing is an artifact of lj's design and terminology, imho -- if they'd called it "marking" or something neutral like that, there wouldn't be quite so much baggage attached.

[cellio]

Definitely bad terminology. I think of my readers as "subscribers" -- people who've indicated some interest in seeing what I write on a regular basis. Some of them are friends; some of them are casual acquaintances; some of them are complete strangers.

LJ compounds the problem by using one mechanism for two purposes, subscription and access control. So you can end up in a situation where user A doesn't read user B's journal but wants B to be able to see locked posts. If B doesn't realize that he might get mad because A never comments. Messy, messy, messy...

[kip-w.livejournal.com]

My gosh! I've got nobody. Nobody! I tried it with my LJ username, and it's Zipville.

Well, either that or a technical glitch. Still, a bit disconcerting.

[nwhyte]

Because it's the first time you've used it. It will start tracking changes in your f-list from today on.

[bradhicks.livejournal.com]

What works better for me is to use the History function in the Edit Friends dialog box in the offline composing tool Semagic. I hit it once a day or so and click the "Update from server" button on Edit Friends and it tells me how many I have, who's subscribed since the last time, and who's unsubscribed since the last time.

[lysystratae.livejournal.com]

Seems like a good question to ask this on... are you the same Nancy that's been selling buttons at east coast cons for as long as I've been going to them (which would be more years than I reallllly want to admit)? Ok, that's kindof open to interpretation, isn't it... lol...

Ok, let's try this... Hi, it's Misha, remember me?

[nosebeepbear.livejournal.com]

That would be Nancy, yes :).

[lysystratae.livejournal.com]

wow.. cool!