Privacy Rewrite GSoC Project

[Mark Doliner]

On Wed, Aug 5, 2009 at 1:51 AM, Sulabh Mahajan<sulabh.dev at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On Wed, Aug 5, 2009 at 12:58 PM, Felipe Contreras
> <felipe.contreras at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>> Not to mention that the differentiation would be a no-op in MSN as
>> I've already explained.
>>
>> But I'll have to be clear on this: this new design is not solving
>> anything and only introducing new problems. What is supposed to happen
>> when you select "Allow all users" in MSN? There's no such privacy
>> setting.
>
> "Allow all users" in MSN would be emptying the block list, including the
> meta contact "all others". So it would be doing what it says, allowing
> everyone.

I don't think it's wise to empty the block list stored on the server.
I think people expect that list to remain in tact, and if they use
another IM client at another location they'll be confused/annoyed that
they're block list is empty.  In this case my vote would be to not
have an "allow all users" option for MSN.

> Similarly, there are options of block list and allow list in AIM, but there
> are no such states in the interface I mentioned. How do we then set an AIM
> account to the state of "Block everyone on block list", easy we block each
> user we want to, and unblock "all others" meta contact. How do we set the
> account to the state of "Allow only the users on allow list", we allow the
> users we want, and remove "all others" metacontact from the allow list.

Hmm, I wonder if this will be easy for users to figure out?  I wonder
if maybe it would be better if the list of blocked users was more
closely related to the privacy state for some protocols, and less
closely related to the privacy state for others.  For example, for an
MSN account the dialog would look like this:
( O ) Block users on my block list
(    ) Block users on my block list and anyone not on my buddy list

Blocked Buddies:
These buddies will be blocked regardless of the setting chosen above.
    |    Buddy name    |
    +------------------------+
    | Sulabh Mahajan  |
    | Richard Stallman |
    +-------------------------+



But for an AIM account the dialog would look like this:
(    ) Allow everyone
(    ) Only allow certain users
( O ) Only block certain users
        Blocked Buddies:
        This buddies will be blocked only when the "Only block certain
users" privacy setting is selected.
            |    Buddy name    |
            +------------------------+
            | Sulabh Mahajan  |
            | Richard Stallman |
            +-------------------------+
(    ) Block anyone not on my buddy list



And for AIM the list of blocked users would only be visible if the
"only block certain users" option was selected.  I don't know how this
would work if you wanted to merge the privacy UI for multiple
accounts.

-Mark