Okay, so we've got:

Subscriptions:
- users whose entries you can see on your reading page
-- public entries only will turn up on your reading page if the user does do not grant you access
-- public entries and protected entries will turn up on your reading page if the user does grant you access.

So, the question is: What if I subscribe to someone because I want to read *only* their public entries, and they grant me access? i.e. their protected posts will automatically show up on my reading page, whether I want them to or not?

I ask this question because for me, this is a fundamental purpose of the 'subscribe' feature.

It's not just about whether I'm granting the user access to my protected entries by wanting to follow them. It's that I'm *only* interested in what they're posting publicly. In my case, generally it's to do with fannish vs. meatspace content. In many LJs in my community, fannish content will be posted publicly and meatspace content flocked.

Presently on LJ I manage to keep up with these public entries without friending journals with the tracking function. This lets me: a) specify what sort of content I want to keep up with, b) subsequently weed out the content i'm not interested in keeping up with, and of course c) not give the user access to my flocked entries.

But it also disengages me to a degree; the user doesn't know I'm tracking them in any way, whereas I would be indicating my interest in them - making a connection - if I friended/subscribed to them.

So I guess what I'm getting down to is, I want Dw's subscription feature to exert more control over what I want to see, either:

- If a user has granted you access, when subscribing to them you can specify if you want their public entries only, or both public and protected, on your reading page

or

- The tracking-tags function transformed from a notification service to a subscription service - you can subscribe to my "fic: torchwood" tag and only my public (and/or protected) torchwood fic entries would show up on your reading page.


Does anyone know if anything like this is in the works? Is it worth me requesting it as a feature?


* I say 'awkward topic' because I think we're still struggling to disconnect ourselves from the connection of "friending" with "i want to be your friend!" Actually, subscription may mean that I *don't* want to be your friend. And that's no more a bad thing than not wanting to be friends with the owners of blogs you subscribe through through your RSS aggregator.