Answers to some Friends questions

This entry answers some (or all?) of the questions from previous entries about friends.

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Eliezer:

Since the notify list checkbox is now gone from the entry posting screen, what happens now when an entry is posted?

I know I answered this one privately already, but I suspect others will be caught out by it too so I’ll answer here too….

The notify list checkbox is only gone while you have no friends listed. When you have friends who want to be notified (cos not all friends will, eventually) then the checkbox comes back.

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WaterspriteFlying:

I think I must have missed something. When I added myself to a diarist’s “friends” list, there was an option to allow notification or not.

Its possible your list has become corrupt, especially if you were making changes during the ‘flux’ time when I had some residual and annoying bugs. If its still an issue let me know by private email which diarist is showing wrong and I’ll change it. If it shows in the top list then it means it thinks that person chose you as a friend.

I thought the purpose of being a “friend” was to receive notifications. Are there other reasons to do it?

At this moment in time there are no other reasons to be a “friend”. But watch this space, the friends system is the base for many other new features that are just around the corner that will rely on you being a friend of a diarist…

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Ruffus:

Do you need to be a member of this site to be a friend?

Yes. Well sort of. You need to have a Hamiko account but you do not need to use DearDiary in any other form. Hamiko accounts are free and we don’t collect any more personal information than you want to give, except an email address which is after all kind of necessary 🙂

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MagicWhiskey:

Is there a way to get the notify/friend list e-mails and those “you’ve got a new reader comment” sent to different e-mail addresses? Hotmail is a wee bit nitpicky about storage space and I’m on a LOT of notify lists so my inbox fills up way too fast. So… is there, is there, is there?

Not right now, but I could perhaps come up with something that would enable that… Let me think about that one a little to see how best to do it.

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becoming:

I think either your Friends List has gotten corrupt (for the same reasons as WaterspriteFlying above) in which case let me know, or you’re not waiting long enough for it to appear, or you have a system problem. Mail me privately ([email protected]) if you’re still having troubles and we’ll see if we can figure out whats up.

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JanuaryGirl:

Are you planning to later add an option that will allow non-DD users to be on notify lists, or will they have to register like they intend to keep a DD, even though they won’t actually do so, and get onto the notify list that way?

They will need to register as if they want to keep a diary, but if they never add any entries, they’ll never show up anywhere except on your friends list. No-one else will know they’re here because, they’re not here really – they’re just friends 🙂

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bookworm:

I’m just wondering how to contact the people who were on my notify list and I had no idea who they were.

Mail me privately and include your username and I’ll send you the list. Make sure you mail me from the address you used to sign up with because I won’t send your list to some random email address just in case its not you 🙂

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sezrah:

i even have the opportunity to restrict people if i happen to not want them on there thankyou!!

I know what you’re talking about 🙂 You’ve spotted the first of the new features to help give diarists more control over who hassles them 🙂 Its only a small step, there are others on the way… Thanks for the kind words.

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Everyone:

Change is usually not pleasant. I’m sorry the changes are so radical, but trust me, they are necessary. The old notification system could only ever be that (ie, it could never be extended to allow you to choose to restrict your diary reading to people on your notify list, or to allow you to restrict who leaves comments to people on your notify list!), it was old and outdated.

Once the new system gets more familiar you’ll be fine. Please don’t stop sending your feedback though, if there’s something in the new system that is just plain awkward then it may be possible to modify it to make it easier.

Steve.