comment with different privacy level than the entry made on

[anya98]

Title
comment with different privacy level than the entry made on

Short, concise description of the idea
a user may choose the level of privacy of their comment, to an entry that they haven't written themselves. such as "LJ users only" or "anyone" can view this comment

Full description of the ideai tend to get frustrated while commenting on the

Comments

[azurelunatic]

Another possible problem: what if the journal owner is not comfortable with comments being left that are not public? I'm not sure I'd be okay with that, especially from people who are not on my friends list.

[justhuman]

In addition to what azurelunatic said, it would cause all sorts of confusion in displaying the comments and the comment threads. Say LJ displayed the comment as "screened" so that only the intended audience could see the comment as soon as the comment replied to, it is unscreend. It has to be manually re-screened to hide it again - leaving the poster's name viewable for whatever short time it take to re-screen. A screened comment with replies, some of which are screened, tend to just make the conversation convoluted.

A private message could be sent to the original poster. That wouldn't meet all the intent here, but I don't think that setting privacy on comments would work.

[lady_angelina]

Excellent point about the screening process. Not to mention that if someone else is tracking the post or thread, they'll get not only the journal owner's comment (because it has to be posted as unscreened, even if momentarily) but also the commenter's original comment in the notification email. This is actually why I'm not comfortable leaving sensitive personal information in even posts that are set to screen all comments, including my own posts

[koulagirl666]

It could be set that the journal owner can choose whether it is enabled on their journal, or limited to friends/registered users/all users.

In any case there would need to be the indication that it's a locked comment. I suspect the only way to make it workable would be for it to be to the journal owner's friends list and then the comment thread would only be seen by anyone on that list, and commenting in that thread be essentially friendslocked (in its entirety or from that point on). It would be an increase in server load because each thread/comment would need to be checked for viewing/posting access.

I do share the OP's frustration though, especially as comments in other journals where the options for minimising search engine inclusion etc. are not checked then show up in searches even though we have them checked on our journals - it's something that makes me pause when I see a friend has made a public entry, as well.

[cos]

Not sure what I think of this, but if it were to be done, it should be significantly narrowed to avoid complexity and confusion. For example:

1. Allow commenters on public entries to choose to make their comments viewable to logged in users only - but *not* any more restrictive security levels, such as their friends.

2. Any reply to such a comment is automatically viewable to logged in users only; nothing in that subthread can be fully public.

3. Allow the owner of the journal to disallow that if they choose to, through a per-account or per-post setting (but think about community settings too...)

4. Non-public comments like this on a public post must be very clearly displayed differently in a way that indicates they're not public to all readers who can see them.

In that form, I am neutral about the suggestion.

[mlady_rebecca]

I would be fine with someone restricting their comment to my friends list, even if I make the original post public. I would guess that once a comment tightened the security level, then every other comment in that thread would be similarly restricted.

I like the idea in theory, but it sounds like it would unnecessarily complicate the comment system.