Provide ability to disable/opt-out of new things via console

[desh]

Title
Provide ability to disable/opt-out of new things via console

Short, concise description of the idea
Provide ability to disable/opt-out of new things via console

Full description of the ideaWhen new features are added to LiveJournal, an ability to disable the feature, or opt-out of it, should be provided via the console whenever possible.

Comments

[burr86]

Agreed. If you want to maintain the same LJ experience for the entire time you're on the site, you should probably start up your own LJ site; LJ is a community and a business that needs to keep expanding, and asking for an opt-out of everything is really kind of pushing the boundaries of what I'd consider reasonable to expect out of any new feature.

[kunzite1]

from personal experience, livejournal is not too simple to install.

[matgb]

I'd like the facility to opt out of new stuff and then chose to opt in. Both nudges and gifts are things I'd rather not get bothered by, and some of the arguments as to why nudges were bad were very compelling (took a bit to convince me at first).

If I like something, I'll opt in, but if I dislike it, it can stay away. That'd be a good plan I think, general opt out of new stuff but you can opt in if you want.

[eideteker]

So are you suggesting that users be able to opt out of all non-critical new features? Or just individually as they come up? I mean, are you saying optout = 1 means that as features are added, you will be opted out of all of them? Or are you just asking for a way to command-line opt out as features are added?

The meaning of the former is to the effect of: I have optout set to 1, so when the nudge feature comes out, I'm not affected by it (unless I then go into editinfo and enable it).

The meaning of the latter is I go into the console and set nudge = 0 and now I don't get nudges.

[desh]

I meant individually.

[darsant]

No.

Admin console should be used for old cases when there wasn't a simplified interface.

Reserve the admin console for legacy things that aren't in mainstream use, or admin stuff.

All development for interfaces should be on real pages. No point in restricting a new feature to the admin console only. Then all you do is greatly limit the amount of people that can use the new feature, and thereby destroy the value. Not to mention up the support requests on people wanting to be given exact instructions on how to do it.

[desh]

To clarify, I don't think things should only be able to be changed at the admin console. I just think that the admin console is better than nowhere at all.

But if you don't even like that use of the console, that's your prerogative.

[darsant]

I still hold by my belief that the admin console should not be used for new development

If you want a new feature (such as opting out) you should suggest to develop an actual interface to it, rather than modifying it through the console.

Hey, I wonder why they call it "admin console".

[mendel]

Two levels of no:

First, nothing, nothing, nothing that regular users have to do should require the admin console. You should be able to use all of the unprivileged features of LiveJournal without knowing it exists, and everything that a user can do should have a UI element to do it.

And given that, the level of control you're suggesting is ridiculous. Most new features can be outright ignored instead of being explicitly opted out of (tags or S2, for instance); others really require global adoption to work at all (subdomains). What's left is nothing compared to the usability nightmare (features not working when people forget they've opted out, plus new users being faced with columns upon columns of options) and the support nightmare (every user's experience is different from every other's) that that sort of thing would provide.