A change to the process of renaming a journal

[crysalim]

Title
A change to the process of renaming a journal

Short, concise description of the idea
Making the distinction between 1) clearing your friends list, 2) clearing your friends-of list, and 3) doing nothing, more clear (as well as adding an option).

Full description of the idea
When a user renames their journal with a rename token they're given a choice about what to do with their friends list. There are 3 choices - clearing your friends list (mutual and friends-of), clearing your friends-of list, and doing nothing.

I recently renamed my journal and chose to clear my friends-of list. At first, nothing happened - I thought that my choice either was ineffective, or that there was a code error, so I emailed Livejournal support.

It was my impression that this choice would clear what I saw on my own profile under the heading Friends Of. The important point here is that the user profile makes a clear distinction between friends, mutual friends, and friends of. I thought that the rename process would remove -only- what was listed under the "friends of" field. However, technically, every mutual friend is also a "friend of", so when Livejournal support dealt with my issue, they cleared my entire friends list.

Since this was not my intention I requested further help from Livejournal support, and they were very helpful in telling me why this occured. But, I believe it would be a great service to users if either of the following things was done:

1) create the option during the rename process to do what I was trying to do (in other words, clear only what the user profiles -says- are your friends of)

Or, if this is not feasible:

2) reword the choices so that that users understand that clearing your "friends of" list will clear your entire friends list as well, and not just what shows as "friends of" on your own profile
An ordered list of benefits

• - the ability to bring the friends you select to your new journal in an automated way, instead of individually requesting each friend after a rename
• - resolution of possible issues of this type in the future

An ordered list of problems/issues involved

• - the possibility of coding this feature not being worth the amount of time it would take / help it would provide
• - Frank not liking it