To Graham & the Google Reader Team,
You've made a small step in the right direction by allowing people to
re-tag shared items, de-share them, and re-share them in different
ways. You will have made a lot of folks happy-ish with that step.
I'm still concerned with two things, however:
1. you haven't addressed the so-called "friend" who somehow ended up
on my sharing list, even though I have never emailed with that person
and have never chatted with that person. I'm fine and dandy with
hiding his shared item updates from my GReader view, but what I really
want to do is to be able to hide MY shared item updates from HIS
GReader view. Could his email address somehow have been linked to mine
via spam he may have sent to my blog, which sent his email address to
me? Goodness knows I've never chatted with him (or emailed with him -
trust me!), which implies that he shouldn't be on my sharing list in
the first place. THIS FREAKS ME OUT.
[Off to put on my tinfoil helmet....]
2. This entire feature really ought to be opt-in. If it were, you'd
have a LOAD of happy users out here, instead of a bunch of ticked-off
people. You have a load of other examples of other opt-in Google
Reader features that people simply love, like: Google Gears, Trends,
and Recommendations. Please please pretty please make this an opt-in
feature as well! I think it's pretty apparent that a lot of us who use
the sharing feature have adapted it for our own purposes, and what
you've done has simply broken how we work.
--Megan/librarygrrrl
On Dec 18, 7:45 pm, Google Reader Guide wrote:
> Hi all,
> We just added a new option for those of you wishing to rearrange your
> sharing habits in light of the new features. Now, the "clear all
> shared items" link also includes an option to apply a tag to all of
> these items. That means you can safely clear out your shared items,
> but still keep them organized together, either for your own reference
> or to share with a more limited audience.
> You can find this option by going to the "Friends" tab under
> "Settings," then clicking the "move or clear your shared items" link.
> The tags menu, should you choose that option, will let you select an
> existing tag or create a new one.
> Regarding friends you haven't chatted with: As Zac T noted, what
> you're seeing here is probably a side effect of a Gmail feature. Go to
> your Gmail settings and click the "Chat" link. You'll see an "auto-
> add" option there that adds people to your chat contact list when
> you've emailed with them. That bypasses the ordinary approval step you
> have to go through to chat with someone (on the assumption that it's
> okay because you're already communicating with them). You can turn
> this option off if you're not comfortable with that.
> Thanks,
> Graham
