Today I am reading my RSS feeds as usual. Since Google implemented a social commenting platform in its reader (and also on web search) there is a new kind of decision to be taken, regarding our levels of trust and involvement.
Let’s see what i’m talking about:
- everyday I can decide which feeds I want to read (the subscriptions on the reader’s left bar)
- everyday I get shared items from my friends’ feeds (people you follow)
- I can leave a comment on both kind of entries that I receive, and my comments will be visible by who is reading my shared feeds.
- Sometimes I have the need to comment on a contextual item, and if I comment via GoogleReader interface the “share” is mandatory.
now, I usually like the RSS stream of my friends since I find things I could not imagine that existed. For example in this image you see the latest Paolo’s shared item: today I got a very impolite rant with some spoken violence and menaces. Now, I don’t like this kind of discussion, even if they have good reasons, I think that this violent mood speaks beneath their intentions. So I have the need to speak with Paolo but without sharing his own entry. At this moment this is not possibile on Google Reader.
- If I comment “i dont like this kind of mood” my readers will find that item in their feeds.
- If I un-subscribe to Paolo’s feeds I will loose something nice sooner o later
- If I send an email to Paolo (or other private communication) what can I say? That’s not his words, it’s just an item that he liked, for some reason maybe different from what I disliked in the same item, I don’t want to bother him with my opinions about his feed (I usually comment on his blog about his own entries)
- Silence it a very good answer, but well… not very social
- Or I can post it on my blog, that’s out from my feeds and “maybe” Paolo is reading too.
It seems that we will be dealing with many levels of sharing and stratification of the online conversations. Netiquette is not enough.
2 Comments
I did read your post… but quite frankly I don't know how to comment… I'll think about it
thanks for reading my poor english. At the moment Google is not offering any kind of solution. Even Friendfeed is not allowing any kind of auto-filtering in our feed streams, while Facebook is just menacing you when one of your followers hits "flag as inappropriate", without giving any kind of useful information (fun fact: also followers of your followers can flag your entries as inappropriate).