"Following" Someone

[Lynne M]

I would also ask everyone to consider that if someone follows 700 people, it's pretty likely that they don't understand what the follow feature is for. Because the ONLY thing it's doing is sending a stream of thousands of posts to their news feed page, not organized by forum or topic. It makes the news feed page useless.

 

[SMD]

I'm very sorry that your friend was harassed, but the same events could happen if the follow feature was disabled. It takes a total of three clicks for anyone, DIS member or not, to see a list of your posts.

And that's not new. Even before we had a follow feature, on the old board software, it took one click to see everything the follow feature shows you today.

And how many times has someone mentioned a previous post by someone on a thread only to be attacked for going too far reading past posts or that going through post histories is out of line or creepy? Isn't joining a board and following hundreds of people you've never even interacted with very similar to reading people's post, which the community often feels isn't acceptable? I never seen a moderator defend those posts. If anything they delete anyone who makes a reference to someone's past posts. If people say they don't like being followed by a certain user, why are you defending that but not the other?

 

[sam_gordon]

And how many times has someone mentioned a previous post by someone on a thread only to be attacked for going too far reading past posts or that going through post histories is out of line or creepy? Isn't joining a board and following hundreds of people you've never even interacted with very similar to reading people's post, which the community often feels isn't acceptable? I never seen a moderator defend those posts. If anything they delete anyone who makes a reference to someone's past posts. If people say they don't like being followed by a certain user, why are you defending that but not the other?

I'm going to disagree with the bolded. Usually there is one or two people who criticize whoever went back through old posts, but I think it's far from the majority.

Are people uncomfortable because they're being followed? Sure. Does that mean a feature should be disabled? No. What if I say I'm uncomfortable if someone quotes me? Can I get that feature disabled? What do you think the "community" would say about that?

 

[JoeA]

Be a useless fool like me and nobody will follow you!

 

[Shutterbug]

I am totally saving this gif for use.

 

[indygirl99]

I get some people feel uncomfortable and sometimes our minds go to the what if's but think about this particular instance.

This is a young adult looking for someone/ones to talk to about Disney. They are probably very familiar with Facebook and how it works ( friends, likes).
They are probably not familiar with how this particular message board works and that is where the follows come in.

For some people the internet/message boards are the only comfortable way to have conversations and make friends.

Case in point my sister has a PhD, works as a vice president in the company that employs her but can not have a face to face conversation with you.

She is great on the phone and can make great deals on the computer but if you talked to her you would not believe she is as intelligent as she is.

When I first came to the DIS I made some fumbles because this message board did not work like the one I was already active on. I eventually figured it out and most all were gracious to me as I tried. Then when the platform changed some of us fumbled again but we again learned how to work the board.

I think it is easy. Answer the messages if you want to, ignore them if you are not interested.

Kindness comes back in kind.

 

[Hannahinwonderland]

I agree. Am I that interested in this person's posts? Hardly. But I am trying to respond kindly because if I was looking for a friend and turned to this message board, I would appreciate if people chatted with me.

Question for moderators: if you choose to "ignore" someone, is that similar to blocking? I'm assuming they can still see your posts, but if not, maybe that would be a good option for those worried about followers.

I just noticed I follow one person. Oops, sorry! I don't think I meant to follow them.

 

[Goofy_Disney_Dad]

My sinister side now wants to go on a mass following spree...

 

[linzjane88]

I am totally saving this gif for use.

As you should. SO many uses.

It would have been highly applicable in the DVC 4/4 policy change debacle.

 

[Lynne M]

This is a young adult looking for someone/ones to talk to about Disney. They are probably very familiar with Facebook and how it works ( friends, likes).
They are probably not familiar with how this particular message board works and that is where the follows come in.

Or Twitter, where the follow function has more or less the same use it does here. On Twitter, you can use a view that shows you everything everyone posts, or you can use a view that shows you selected accounts that you follow. It's all about filtering, and managing the flow of information.

 

[Lynne M]

Question for moderators: if you choose to "ignore" someone, is that similar to blocking? I'm assuming they can still see your posts, but if not, maybe that would be a good option for those worried about followers.

The ignore function just means that you don't see messages posted by that person, and you don't receive PMs from that person.

The concept of "blocking" in the sense that it's used on Twitter or Facebook simply doesn't apply here. Let's say that the DISboards instituted a block feature, that blocked a certain DISboards user from viewing your posts. It would only work with people who have accounts here. Someone without an account, coming in, say, through Google, would still see everything you post.

The only alternative would be to have a completely access-controlled board, where you must be a member to view posts. I certainly don't speak for the owners of this board, but I cannot see that ever happening. It would defeat the purpose of the DISboards.

As I've said, and others have said, you post here with the knowledge that EVERYONE with internet access can see what you post. If that makes someone uncomfortable, then posting on the DIS is probably not for them. I'm not dismissing that point of view, I'm sure there are many thousands of regular readers of the DIS that have never made a single post. And they're very welcome here.

 

[WebmasterMaryJo]

I became curious, so looked up who I was following, and my followers (very few ), and was happy to see an old poster - DixieAmos - who was following me. Some of her crazy threads still exist, and I've been enjoying going down memory lane reading her posts.

 

[KathyTX]

For some of the longtime posters who have been surprised to find that they are following someone: do you remember the old favorites list? I think that was what it was called, it was just a way to create a list of your friends or favorite posters so you could easily select them from a list you created instead of searching through tens of thousands of user names. That's what this is, and why you may now find people on your "people I'm following" list. Those old "favorite posters" came over into your "following" list. Same thing.

Seriously, everyone- this is just a way to make an easy-to-get-to list of posters.

This tempest in a teapot has gotten ridiculous. No one is being literally followed. No one is being stalked.

 

[PrincessShmoo]

For some of the longtime posters who have been surprised to find that they are following someone: do you remember the old favorites list? I think that was what it was called, it was just a way to create a list of your friends or favorite posters so you could easily select them from a list you created instead of searching through tens of thousands of user names. That's what this is, and why you may now find people on your "people I'm following" list. Those old "favorite posters" came over into your "following" list. Same thing.

Seriously, everyone- this is just a way to make an easy-to-get-to list of posters.

This tempest in a teapot has gotten ridiculous. No one is being literally followed. No one is being stalked.

I wondered how I got followers as soon as we were on the new board (yeah, I noticed it then).

 

[Allons-y!]

As I mentioned in my post above, if you have any additional questions that are not answered, please feel free to send an email to admin@wdwinfo.com instead of questioning it in the open forum. Thank you.

I took your advice last night and e-mailed. No response.

Also, I double checked and saw nothing in the guidelines that prohibits posters from raising questions on a thread that involve how the board functions. Why would you want to discourage discussion? Isn't it good to get perspectives from your members?

In fact, this is on the Guidelines page:

We do not believe in censorship, and open discussions about various issues is encouraged.

 

[Madame]

As you should. SO many uses.

It would have been highly applicable in the DVC 4/4 policy change debacle.

 

[PrincessShmoo]

I took your advice last night and e-mailed. No response.

Also, I double checked and saw nothing in the guidelines that prohibits posters from raising questions on a thread that involve how the board functions. Why would you want to discourage discussion? Isn't it good to get perspectives from your members?

In fact, this is on the Guidelines page:

The guidelines also say:
9. MODERATORS
The DIS has a wonderful group of Moderators who have volunteered to assist our visitors and monitor the boards. Part of their responsibilities are ensuring that our guidelines are followed which may require that a thread is edited, deleted, closed or moved. If these decisions impact you, we ask that you respect them. Should you have any questions, please direct them to admin@wdwinfo.com. Any discussion about a Moderating decision that takes place on the boards could result in an infraction.

 

[buffettgirl]

If the board owners wanted to, they could simply run a query to remove any follower that any person wants. xenforo also has the ability to add in a feature to remove the follow feature completely. https://xenforo.com/community/resources/remove-follow.2851/

It seems apparent that they aren't going to do any of that.

Another note, when the board was imported from VBulliten friends were imported as 'followers', but what also happened is that any friend request which you did not accept (which just sat there pending) also imported as a follower. So, you used to have a say who followed you, now you don't.

 

[Goofy_Disney_Dad]

 

[mel&me]

I used to be followed by a few people, apparently I was too boring so they left me.