[Suggestion] 'This member limits who may view their full profile': needs better 'social stimulation'

Grover

Well-known member
I was inspired by Dutchbb overhere. When you go to an User's Profile that has been blocked from viewing, you are presented with this:

profile not visible.webp

This user (http://xenforo.com/community/members/eqnoble.1321/) has blocked his profile from viewing by others. What XF tells us is: 'This member limits who may view their full profile'. Yes, thank you, but what can we do to see it then?

The enduser of XF only sees this message and being new to XF as a brand new (and soon to be marketleader) platform, people don't know how to be able to get access to this profile.

What XF 'should' do IMHO is presenting the enduser with additional guidance saying something like: 'Become a member (link to registration page) of ThisForumName to get access to this users (or ThisUsersName) profile'. Or... 'Follow (link to follow function) ThisUsersName to get access to their profile'. Edit... Or... 'ThisUsersName is not following you and therefor you have no access to their profile'.

Something like that is needed, because the message now is too bland and not inviting in any way to generate interest/social activity.

Brilliant, another great suggestion, isn't it? ;)
 
Upvote 9
Yep a link to registration would be a good thing, I agree, if it's just a case of unregistered visitors not being able to see it.

However, if he has it set so that members can't view it either, then that's his preference. So the feature is working as designed, and only admins can view his profile.
 
I take your point, however, some people do just want to keep thier profile private though, and not have anyone other than real friends view their profile.

Link to registration is OK I guess, a little un-necessary I would have thought, given it is pretty unusual for Guests to view profiles, and I wouldn't want people registering JUST to view someone's profile. I assume viewing profiles will be by usergroup permission anyway.

The wording might be a bit dry, but I am sure you can change that on your own board.

I see no problems at all with someone choosing to remain private, and not wanting to share their info.
 
when a user is not being logged-in, I do agree there should be a "Sign-in Message" and "Log-in-Message" instead of any Error-message.

independent of whether the Profile-page you are viewing is set as public or hidden.
 
Yep a link to registration would be a good thing, I agree, if it's just a case of unregistered visitors not being able to see it.

However, if he has it set so that members can't view it either, then that's his preference. So the feature is working as designed, and only admins can view his profile.

I edited my first post now, because I realized that stimulating to follow a user doesn't do anything, because the privacy setting is this: 'View your details on your profile page: People you Follow only'. This wasn't clear enough to me actually... I was under the impression that when I follow someone, I would have get access to their profile. But -apparently- this doesn't work this way.

I take your point, however, some people do just want to keep thier profile private though, and not have anyone other than real friends view their profile.
. But this an fundamental issue I have with XenForo. When I just follow someone they do NOT have to be necessarily a real friend. So in this case the profile of Eqnoble (http://xenforo.com/community/members/eqnoble.1321/) is only visible to people he/she follows. Isn't this strange? Imagine that he/she follows me, but I have no intention at all to follow him/her (because I am not interested or see him/her as a friend)... I -still- do get access to his/her profile. WHY?! I am not interested, so why? This is -again- something that is and works logical on Facebook and all other social platform where you have a mutual friendship. But XenForo doesn't work with mutual friendship connections, making this all a bit more complicated and sometimes unlogical really.

Link to registration is OK I guess, a little un-necessary I would have thought, given it is pretty unusual for Guests to view profiles...

On XF.com you can view profiles as a guest. If this would not be the case, then there needs to be a link to the registration page (instead of only a bland error message), to stimulate registrations.

I see no problems at all with someone choosing to remain private, and not wanting to share their info.

Me neither, but that isn't the point :).
 
Grover,

No doubt there will be settings for a lot of what you are asking within member groups etc. :)

The guests viewing here is probably a setting, one I would immediately turn off on my own site... I am sure you can change the wording to be whatever you like, and include a link to register if you wish :)
 
I edited my first post now, because I realized that stimulating to follow a user doesn't do anything, because the privacy setting is this: 'View your details on your profile page: People you Follow only'. This wasn't clear enough to me actually... I was under the impression that when I follow someone, I would have get access to their profile. But -apparently- this doesn't work this way.

But this an fundamental issue I have with XenForo. When I just follow someone they do NOT have to be necessarily a real friend. So in this case the profile of Eqnoble (http://xenforo.com/community/members/eqnoble.1321/) is only visible to people he/she follows. Isn't this strange? Imagine that he/she follows me, but I have no intention at all to follow him/her (because I am not interested or see him/her as a friend)... I -still- do get access to his/her profile. WHY?! I am not interested, so why? This is -again- something that is and works logical on Facebook and all other social platform where you have a mutual friendship. But XenForo doesn't work with mutual friendship connections, making this all a bit more complicated and sometimes unlogical really.

I first wrote in my first posting:
Or... 'Follow (link to follow function) ThisUsersName to get access to their profile'.

Look, what is the most logical and intuitive thing one does when you see a profile that is blocked from viewing? Yes, you want to become friends with that person! So, in XenForo I expected that I need to follow that person to be able to see their profile (you follow a person to follow their content, don't you? :(). This would be the most logical way of thinking, wouldn't it? Since we are so used to this on all other social platforms. I think it's pretty odd that it is -apparently- the other way round (more or less) on XenForo: the person (who has blocked their profile) needs to follow me so, I am able to see their profile!

It doesn't make sense.
 
I can see why it might have been done that way, perhaps another way to handle it might be to have "approval" of potential followers, and once approved they can view your profile.
 
XenForo: the person (who has blocked their profile) needs to follow me so, I am able to see their profile!

It doesn't make sense.

It does kind of make sense, just because you follow someone doesn't mean they want you viewing all their details, however if they follow you it must mean that they have an interest in you and therefore don't mind you seeing everything.
 
I can see why it might have been done that way,

Ofcourse. Me too. It is the only way now to control that people who you do not want to be able to view your profile, do not get access. But it is really odd and doesn't make sense now: you follow a person to follow their content, don't you?. With profile permissions it works exactly the opposite! :confused:. And the reason is....

...perhaps another way to handle it might be to have "approval" of potential followers, and once approved they can view your profile.

... indeed that there is NO mutual friendships in XenForo. There is no way that one can approve anything on XF... if I want to get access to a user's profile I need to ask him/her to follow me! This is just not logical. I can even choose not to follow him/her and get access to their profile because they decided to follow me on my request. Or even not on my request... they just follow me and I get automatic access. Why?! I am not interested in them maybe at all...

I keep wishing for Friends functionality because of issues like these.
 
I think a distinction has to be made between a FAN and a FRIEND and tiered access to you and your information ... anybody can be a fan of yours ... but friendship has to be mutually approved.
 
It does kind of make sense, just because you follow someone doesn't mean they want you viewing all their details,

I know :), and I fully agree... because they didn't give any approval that I could follow them. There is no mutual/approval thing going on in any way. So XF needs a way to block followers from viewing profiles. But since their is no mutual/approval thing , XF can only handle this by setting 'View your details on your profile page: People you Follow only'. Understandably the only way to get some control, but surely it doesn't make much sense at the same time.

...however if they follow you it must mean that they have an interest in you and therefore don't mind you seeing everything.

Yes, the owner of the profile should/need to be in control indeed. But this comes more or less back again to the discussion how Followers relate to Friends:

I think a distinction has to be made between a FAN and a FRIEND and tiered access to you and your information ... anybody can be a fan of yours ... but friendship has to be mutually approved.

Again I say... the owner of the profile can only make the decision for me (because he/she is in control of the privacy settings on their profile) to be able to view their profile. But look, the strange thing is this: the initiative comes from them! They decide to follow someone and then miraculously the people they follow get access to their profile. Even if those people are not interested! The initiative does NOT come from the other people. You get my point?

If I want to see someones profile and it is blocked, I find it logical that I need to become a follower of that person (I want to follow his/her content) to be able to see it. But if I become a follower of Eqnoble (http://xenforo.com/community/members/eqnoble.1321/)... is has NO effect!

The bottom line is that XF doesn't offer mutual friendships/approval mechanisms, resulting in things like this.
 
I'll be honest I've never fully understood the whole friends thing.

On other forums I get the incoming friends request notice and I just approve it for the hell of it but it doesn't actually mean anything to me at all.
 
On other forums I get the incoming friends request notice and I just approve it for the hell of it but it doesn't actually mean anything to me at all.

I did the same thing. Why people I don't know requested me as a "friend" I never understood. To me a "friend" is someone you took time to get to know through use of the forum. I approved them anyways because I found it impolite/rude to reject anyone.
 
One one forum there was this dude who put in a friends request and I didn't accept it.

None of his posts really meant anything, they were a lot of three worders, if he did post anything of length it was impossible to know what he was chatting so I really didn't want to be friends with him.

I hate the term friends in forums too. Most of the time you don't know them as such, I think acquaintance is more suited on a forum.

Yes I am an unsociable git.
 
I am certainly aware of the fact that the whole Friends concepts also has it cons. But so does this Followers concept on XenForo. I for one hope that there will be a forumpackage on the market that would actually get it right for once and preferably this would be XenForo for me. The point remains that XF doesn't have mutual friendships/approval mechanisms, which causes issues like this. Not only this, but imagine there would be a 1-on-1 chat on XF (just like on FB) -or through a plugin for that matter- in the future: how would that work with only the followers-functionality at hand?

Really, most of my members are not familiar with the concept of 'Following' someone and even if they are... I can imagine the questions coming up: 'How can I view a person's profile if they blocked it? I tried following them, but that doesn't help!'. Indeed. How odd is it for an enduser A -not familiar with XF- having to comprehend that in order to view a blocked profile of user B, this user B has to follow them (user A). It just doesn't make sense and is not intuitive.

Everybody is familiar with the Friends concept. Yes, I agree it has cons. Yes, I admire the innovate thinking of XF moving away from 'common functionality', but in this case I hope there can be some midway found so stuff like this becomes more logical and intuitive to the end users. I am not sure how to achieve it. Maybe others do?
 
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