I recently subscribed to someones blog..
Ouch. I can see where this is totally confusing, yeah. :|
The FAQ entry talks about your profile information. The blog subscribe option meanwhile is primarily intended for people who aren't a member of travellerspoint, so don't have a profile. They fill in their own email address, explicitly "revealing" it, and that's the identification shown to blog owners so they can see who's subscribed.
But for a logged in travellerspoint member, the email address is pre-filled when subscribing, without making the consequences sufficiently clear. Probably that email subscription option should instead change for logged-in members to a checkbox "send an email to my profile email address" or something, which your travellerspoint username being shown as identification to the blog's owner.
And, given the purpose of this feature, there's no central page in which you can see whose blogs you've subscribed to, since most users of the feature won't have a profile to tie those subscriptions to.
But yeah, the person whose blog you've subscribed has the possibility to see your email address. Chances are they never will (it's not the easiest page to get to, and for many older blogs the list of subscribers is huge and filled with the email addresses of clueless spambots, so yours would just be one email address amongst many). But all the same, bad on us.
Possible "fix": If you've already gotten a notification email from that blog, that should contain an unsubscribe link; once you've unsubscribed, it's not possible for the blog owner to see the email anymore.
Yeah, fair points. Hadn't really ever considered this as an issue, but it's a valid concern.
The reason it's this way is somewhat due to considering blog's as the blog creator's website. It would be normal for the person running a site to be able to see the email addresses of subscribers. This is not the same as making the email addresses open to the general public which is what we really aim to avoid and what the FAQ is really addressing.
I wonder if any blog owners would really mind if we removed the ability to see those email addresses? That would by far be the quickest and simplest solution. The only real use for showing them I find is when someone is not receiving notifications. Being able to see that they entered their email address wrong is quite helpful.
......
1. I wonder if any blog owners would really mind if we removed the ability to see those email addresses? That would by far be the quickest and simplest solution.2. The only real use for showing them I find is when someone is not receiving notifications. Being able to see that they entered their email address wrong is quite helpful.
1. I am easy either way. I was just surprised to see the address.
2. I am ok with that too, although the person who can see the address is not the person who gets or does not get the notification.
3. I notice on the item called 'Friends' there is this note -
'Make friends through Travellerspoint. Find out when they upload photos, write for the destination guide, discuss topics in the forum, or post new blog entries.'
So that would solve my first issue mentioned on my original post about being notified when someone posts to a blog I am subscribed to. I would only need to befriend, not subscribe.
I just really dislike the 'friends' designation - Do you want to be my friend - it's so twee.
Steve
I think seeing the email addresses is rather helpful for blog owners given the amount of spam signups; I have two (test) blogs which only have spam subscribers, which I clear out every so often - but if I also had a few regular subscribers to those blogs, then I'd need a way to distinguish between them.
[ 12-Feb-2014, at 23:43 by Sander ]
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